


Cast Aside

by PlainPaper



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2020-08-20 16:03:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 64,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20230570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlainPaper/pseuds/PlainPaper
Summary: She closes the distance between them, holding the steel rods, gripping them so tight she could feel the slick of her sweats against them. It rips her heart looking at him with such love he carries in his eyes for her. How his devotion could have been beautiful if only it is not misplaced.“You are yelling because you have doubts, you are making up excuses for her. You are screaming senses into your own heart; of things, I have known the moment she summoned you to bend your knees. You have loved the wrong person. I tried and I failed. I'll find peace, somehow. But you, you have to live with this. You have to live with her.”The stare he musters is full of hatred towards her.*Completed





	1. Of Snow, Wolf and Dragon

Queen’s Landing

Sansa sits restlessly inside her prison. She has been summoned as soon as Daenerys Targaryen sits upon the throne. The throne she has always claimed as hers. She could only assume the worst for Jon. Jon, who is honorable, and brave could have never allowed the Queen to live after the destruction she has proven herself capable of. She dares not to steal a glance towards the occupants of the other cell. They are dead the two of them; bare to the bone, tied to the wall as the smell of old rotten meat permeated even the stone behind her.

She shudders as she prepares herself for her own death. The Dragon Queen must have known that she has leaked Jon’s secret to others for the rest to consider a more practical option, one that has not the tendency to be vicious. One that has proven his understanding of how duty will forever precede titles. One who is worthy.

She trusts that Arya is safe somewhere. She has sent Bran away, to a place he knows he would be safe to observe the madness of the world. She heeds the summon due to fear of her people’s safety. She would go and delay their deaths as long as she is capable of – in lieu of her responsibility as a Stark.

She hears a creak and she quickly stands up, hoping that the Queen would not stall her death any longer. If she is destined to die than so be it, as long as the Queen leaves Winterfell in peace. Her eyes trained on the shadow. The silhouette getting clearer and clearer before she gasps,

“Jon! You are alive!”

She hastens, but the expression he wears on his face invites doubts to reside in heart, stunting her steps. He is angry and trying his best not to show it. But it is apparent through his stance and the way the rises of his chest end with a rough huff.

“Why can’t you keep a secret Sansa?” He shakes his head, feeling ludicrous perhaps at her inability to keep his secret. “Why are you behaving like a child, tattling to others the secret you learned not two seconds beforehand?”

“It is not your secret to keep if others’ lives hinge on it.” She knows the ramification of her loose tongue. She leans to it hoping it is enough to steel doubts she could sense already blooming within her trusted advisors.

Through gritted teeth he continues, eyes blazing with fire, “You push her to the edge! Your whispering to Tyrion and Varys leaves her with no choice!”

She is taken aback. This is not the Jon she knows. Feeling indignant, she returns his rising voice with matching intensity.

“No choice? Forgive me for I wasn’t made aware that I was the one riding on the dragon burning innocents!”

The rods of steel that stand between might as well be ripped apart. There is a stronger wall building between them, much thicker and impenetrable.

“She has lost so much fighting for us. She doesn’t need someone planning treason behind her after all she has sacrificed!”

Sansa scoffs at Jon’s weak argument.

“It takes more than sacrifice to sit on that throne. Steel heart, of course, but still tender enough to feel for others’ sufferings! She couldn’t be selfish to just think about what she has lost. I have lost my fair share. We have all lost something along the way, our sanity, our family, our childhood! And you. You lost your life. If that’s not enough an argument how about those people burned to death?! We all lost something, someone…”

She could sense it. The thread connecting them has always been brittle, but she has hoped that it could be forged stronger after their reunion. The thread is unraveling, a loose one, being pulled free with no ways to stop it.

And she is flailing to grasp it tight…

“She lost her dragons! Her children!” his voice is desperate to paint this picture where Daenerys is innocent and could never be held responsible towards the atrocity she has blessed upon others.

“Cersei lost hers too. All three of them.” Her voice low. If there is one thing Sansa is certain of Cersei, it is her unparalleled love she bears for her children. That is her one and only redeeming quality. She lost her children; she didn’t burn the city. Daenerys lost two; one in a war she couldn’t possibly choose to not aid, the other is her own doing. She has adamantly repeat herself during the council that they were not ready. There are other ways to win wars. But Daenerys couldn’t wait to bring the storm to King’s Landing.

Storm demands sacrifices.

“What are you trying to imply? That Daenerys is no better than her? You have been kept too close to Cersei you could feel for her but not Dany? Whose side are you on Sansa?”

_Dany…._

“You sided with her…still?” her voice breaks as she could only watch the thread connecting them unravel, slipping through her fingers never to return. Daenerys could do no wrong when she is alive to take all the heat. Men throw themselves at her feet, a beauty with powers of old mystical beasts she has awakens. Men quaked in her presence. Weak men. And now Jon is one of them.

It breathes life to this rage and disappointment she has never thought she could channel to someone she has cared so much for. Someone she has trusted would never hurt her. Her voice dims, mirroring the darkness of the prison. A whisper that snakes through the chamber before it rises and rises, birthing echoes in the confined space.

“I have loved you in ways I don’t understand. But I don’t allow it to blind me. I do what I know is the right thing to do. Between you and her, I choose you…”

_But you wouldn’t side with me. You doubt me in every turn. Innocents could burn and you would turn to her and ask if the heat is too much for her to bear. _

“Between Stark and Targaryen, you would betray the pact for the glory of the latter. You are never one of us. You can never be one of us! You are worse than a Snow. You are a Targaryen.” She hisses, almost spitting as she speaks his true last name. Resentment and disgust she couldn’t hide, wouldn’t hide for him any longer.

His lips twitch as he stands there listening to her insults. She has proven herself she is still the same girl that left Winterfell years ago. “Enough! I didn’t betray the North. I didn’t betray the name Stark! Yes, I brought her back home so us, humanity have a fighting chance. We won because of her army, her dragons. She is the most powerful allies we could hope for. It is the right thing to do.” He looks at her straight in the eyes, wanting so much for her to understand.

“This, what happened here is our own doing.”

A burst of mirth escapes her tight lips. “Save humanity? Look around you, Jon. We are breathing in ashes of people, human beings, perished as she mourns her lost! What shred of humanity is saved?”

His silence is deafening.

She closes the distance between them, holding the steel rods, gripping them so tight she could feel the slick of her sweats against them. It rips her heart looking at him with such love he carries in his eyes for her. How his devotion could have been beautiful if only it is not misplaced.

“You are yelling because you have doubts, you are making up excuses for her. You are screaming senses into your own heart; of things, I have known the moment she summoned you to bend your knees. You have loved the wrong person. I tried and I failed. I'll find peace, somehow. But you, you have to live with this. You have to live with her.”

The stare he musters is full of hatred towards her.

“May Gods have mercy on you, Aegon Targaryen.” She slips back to her corner, hiding her pain behind the shadow.

\------------


	2. Dragon's Mercy

Iron Throne.

There she is. Sitting on a throne that has been warmed up by tyrants of different names while she has been chained and drag to the throne room. Dignity is damned. Dothraki has not the patience for pleasantries.

Sansa stands proudly, raising her chained hands, fixing her hair that falls over her face all while eyeing the small figure that has wrought chaos that is not proportionate to her petite size. The Dragon Queen is wearing black and red- the color of Targaryen and to her side is her nephew, also bearing the same hues.

_Oh, Jon….is the pull so strong and undeniable? _

She catches herself blaming her mother for her decision to not even cover her blatant dislike to that man. She blames herself for not extending kindness when it is due, her immaturity could never be enough a shield to excuse her actions when they were young, for the harsh words she has spoken to him just two days ago.

Now the man is craving to belong to a family, and the Dragon Queen provides just that and even more.

_I am at fault, isn’t it?_

_\-------------_

Tyrion has been kept captive longer. He has had the luxury of time in solitude confinement to go through every decision, questioning them, nit-picking on each that leads him to the Dragon Queen. He wonders and he admits his councils have not always yielded the promising results but still, he questions the severity of each that ultimately gives birth to deaths.

He has long ditched the possibility of living after he is kept for more than three days in the dungeon. Death is written on the rock, no longer possible to be erased. The only question remains is when.

Grief has been his friend. He swears he sees Varys outside his confinement, snickering down at him, at times with pity evident in his eyes. Anger too, has joined in to be his close confidant. Unspoken rage towards the Queen and her dragons. How he feels betrayed by her decision to burn and burn everything to crisps. It lasts for days and when he has nothing else to be mad for, when all energy has been consumed to feed his rage, he is left spent and miserable, seeing more and more dead apparitions outside his prison cell. Hours spent in the darkness and _them_ propels him to conclude; perhaps death should be welcomed instead of feared.

In death, he wouldn’t be as lonely…

He lies on the hard floor, picking the crumbs from yesterday’s meal from his beard when he hears footsteps closing in.

_Oh good, death has come for me…_

_\------------_

Not long after her musing, another different sound of footsteps appears, accompanied by the sound of chains being dragged onto the floor, a familiar grunt getting closer and closer. Sansa shots a glance towards her back, trying to identify the identity of the other prisoner.

It is the Lord of Casterly Rock himself. Sansa almost offers him a forbidding grin, and he almost smirks back at her as they are sizing up each other, both are very aware of how this is not the first time they are brought into the very familiar chamber as prisoners.

He clicks his ankles together mockingly before coming to a halt in front of the Queen. He bows his head partially towards Sansa, and Sansa curtsies gracefully at him. They both know they will be no justice today, no trials even, for they could very well predict that they are both doomed the moment _she_ burns all that goes against her.

There is something about knowing the end is so near. When it is so close, one could feel it breathing down the neck and when it is undisputable, it somehow offers them a blanket of misplaced courage to sneer at death that seems to pace impatiently; like a caged lion being dangled with young gazelle.

Tempting. 

A voice is booming, listing the titles the Queen has collected. She has not the patience to listen. She simply glares and rolls her eyes as the list goes on and on. Sooner or later someone might pass out trying to say all those in one breath. She titters to herself before she realizes how high the Queen’s eyebrows rise while giving her a piercing stare.

She returns the stare with matching glare.

“You know what I miss most about Joffrey and Cersei? They don’t pretend to be pleasant. They are evil to the bone. While you hide behind the pretense of leaving the world a better place. I have one more title for you – Queen of Ashes. Peg it together with the rest. The whole world would kneel. You crave for such validation, don’t you?” Her eyes sweep over Jon’s hurt expression, and the familiar ache in her chest returns in a high fever.

But Jon has made his choice. And he is never hers, to begin with.

And Tyrion’s poor attempt to cover his chuckles only blazes her last gathered courage to greet death in its full glory.

The Dragon Queen tries to hide her rage behind a forced smile. Her back is too stiff as if she is physically holding herself in check not to give in to her taunting and Tyrion’s unfiltered insolence.

Sansa finds a sliver of satisfaction as she observes such a display. She truly believes she would not survive this, might as well be damned with courtesies and pleasantries and speaks freely as it would yield the same end.

“I collect titles. The same way you collect men from different families. First Baratheon, followed by Lannister, then Bolton. Was there a Tyrell involved or was that a fail attempt to expand the collection?”

_A whore. _

Sansa’s chains rattle at the accusation, realizing Daenerys has succeeded in igniting her anger.

“You think you are so clever, aren’t you?” The Queen is simmering with her blatant disrespect yet there is a hint of joy knowing she has managed to pin down her enemy’s ego.

Sansa tries to compose her scattered thoughts. “I don’t think I am clever Your Grace, I know for certain that I can be.”

“I can vouch for that Your Grace. The last time she was here,” Tyrion gestures crudely with his hands, “erghh, not so much. It’s there, sure, but not as developed.”

Sansa grins at his remark yet the Queen seems intent to ignore Tyrion, her eyes only marking Sansa.

“You think so highly of yourself.”

Sansa replies with aloofness so apparent in her voice. “How could I not? I only have myself. I don’t have dragons. I might as well bereft of a family name. Especially here in the South. What meaning left at the name Stark once cloaked by Baratheon, Lannister, Bolton, Tyrell,” she repeats the name the Queen has listed first before she steals herself a deep breath. She knows what she is about to say is a lie. But she wants so bad to hurt her, to taint whatever it is they bore to one another. She decides with the cruelest one to ruin them – a seed of doubt. She looks at Jon, her smile cunning before her gaze returns to the Queen as she resumes, “- even a Targaryen?”

Daenerys is taken aback; her shoulders drop as her back flattens against the throne. Sansa is confident the seed is planted deep as a look of confusion and hurt flash across her face as she turns to gauge Jon’s expression. Jon denies it, shaking his head yet the way the Queen’s eyebrows arch suggests that the seed is already snuggled with the soil of abundant fear, watered with suspicion.

It just a matter of time before it grows and wrecks them.

As she enters the threshold of death, Sansa clutches that little glory tight to her chest.

“I remember still the conversation we shared in Winterfell. Every single word of it.” Her stare is filled with fire but Sansa steels herself against it. A warning meant to silence Sansa from heaping more suspicions on their barely budding relationship.

“Why are we so similar yet so distant? We know each other’s pain. Why are you so hell-bent on defying me?” Her voice drops a timbre, heavy with the failure to understand why it is so hard to win the hearts of the people at this side of the sea.

“Similar? I have failed to fathom such Your Grace. We are as different as fire and ice, but it is true perhaps, the only similarity we share is how we are hell-bent to mold the world the way we see fit. You don’t fit in the world I deem as fair. Not after what happened here.” Sansa looks at the rubbles littering the floor. Of the walls ripped open, allowing her to see Drogon flying freely in the air. What is left to be ruled over? The place is as good as a representation of the world’s fate in her hands.

Her dragon becomes bigger and bigger as it flies closer, back to its mother. Sansa has her gaze falls to Jon, his expression foreign, no more warmth for her name, as she mumbles to herself, yet loud enough not to escape the Queen’s hearing, “To have dragons…how neat.” Almost spitting at the cursed seat and the one sitting on it.

“I always wanted one. You couldn’t deny its allure. Such powerful being…” Daenerys bestows the room with a smile at Tyrion’s words upon her one child. Tyrion continues, not quite finish, “capable of such massive destruction.”

The Queen’s smile disappears, her lips pursed, eyes bulging.

Sansa wonders if that is the same expression the mad king’s had worn years before his death.

“You hate my children.” An unquestionable fact spills over her lips. Sansa hates them, forgetting how without them the North would have been razed to the ground by the undead.

“Your children skewed the leverage that keeps the world on its precarious balance. What fools would dare to defy dragon especially after what happened here?”

“You. Both of you.” Daenerys looks down at her captives, challenging them both to deny it.

A sardonic smile spreads slowly upon her lips, mocking the queen with an expression that suggests her silliness to forget. “Ah, true. But I have failed, didn’t I? And here I come, to be cleansed by the dragon’s breath.”

“Cleansed? By Drogon’s breath?” Daenerys repeats Sansa words back to her. She smirks excitedly at the thought of her thinking her punishment would be abrupt when she deserves to have a deliberate and prolonged sentence. “You dare hope for a quick end?”

Sansa stands her ground, her mind listing all possible ends that could offer enough horror for the rest to second guess their intention to question her reign.

\------------

Tyrion keeps his mouth shuts most of the time. He has had scenes after scenes playing in the dungeon, picturing his end inside his mind and what is unfolding in front of him is one that escapes his imagination. For one, he would have never thought to see Sansa again. He has considered North blackens by now.

But seeing her alive, sparks old hope in his chest. He recognizes it. Long he has known Sansa and she of all people deserves death the least.

\------------

It is Tyrion’s words that forces her to take a step back.

“Give her to me then Your Grace. You wish to be perceived as merciful? The death counts stop now. Grant us our lives. Instead of quick, unsatisfying death, let Lady Sansa here suffers being shackled to this demon monkey until the end of time.”

Sansa is panicking, evident from her shaken voice. She has readied herself for death. To have all those courage and strength gathered for nothing invites new terror named uncertainty. “No! You want me dead. Now do it.”

Time appears to stop; respecting the Queen’s contemplation on what would hurt Sansa Stark the most. She calls for her nephew to come closer, whispering back and forth before she finally stands, her sentence finalized.

“I can be benevolent and merciful Sansa Stark. You are going to be one of the few recipients of those gifts you are so certain I am incapable of extending.” She walks away from her throne, closer and closer to Sansa as if afraid her voice alone couldn’t convey the punishment clearly.

“For the crime of planning treason against me, I sentenced you to Walk of Atonement, strip bare from any titles, shred from any decency. May it serve as a gentle reminder that I am a force to be reckoned with.”

A pause. Given to allow her prisoner to digest the horror that comes with it.

“Following after, you are not allowed to return to the North until the end of your days.”

“And where should I spend the remaining days?”

“You are to live in exile in Casterly Rock, with Lord Tyrion as your husband. See Sansa, I even grant you a husband, am I not a merciful ruler still?”

“Do you expect me to be grateful that I escape death?”

“I want you to be grateful that I still allow you to breathe in the new world I am going to build. You of all people are the least deserving of it.”

“Do I sing praises now? Of ballads listing the Queen’s mercy for as long as I shall live?”

“No. But you will, bend your knees.” A quick motion with her hand and a Dothraki kicks Sansa to submission. His rough hands at the back of her dress, ripping it open, keeping true to his Queen’s word for the prisoner to be stripped bare from any titles and decency. Sansa hears her nephew’s voice, bargaining for a piece of cloth to be allowed to cover her. She hears Tyrion hissing at the sight of her naked body before he too yells at the Queen.

Yet she feels only numbness covering her body when no pieces are left to do so. She looks down on her lap, her sight murky with the presence of hot tears as her mind remembering this familiar horror. Her body trembled uncontrollably, relieving each memory with unchallenged clarity.

_My lady is overdressed. Unburdened her._

She could see him. She could describe the sigil adorning the prod of his crossbow, aimed at her…

_You’ve known Sansa since she was a girl. Now watch her becomes a woman_

She shudders as she feels his hands on her back, ripping and entering her forcefully.._._

The mirth of laughter builds within her chest slowly but surely. Even the hands roaming all over her body stops for a while. It builds to a point where she is roaring with laughter, shifting the mood in the throne room. She could feel her chest tightens, begging for more air but still the laughter booms even greater.

When the laughter subsides and turns to a leftover chuckle, she looks Jon straight in the eyes, repeating his last promise to her.

“I’ll protect you. I promise.”

Lies.

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good day! Happy reading and leave comments.


	3. A Lion and A Wolf

_She completed her walk of atonement. On her own, accompanied by Daenerys’s men, observing first hands the destruction lurking in each alley. Her body was sweaty from what she believed to be the residual heat of the Queen’s wrath with ashes clinging to her skin, thick enough to offer protection from the very few lingering eyes. _

_By the end of it, her feet blistered and bleeding, she saw them in the distance. She recognized him first. How could she not when she had had his image burned at the back of her mind the moment she realized it was more than familial love she carried for him. He was wearing the cloak she had stitched for him, obvious from afar yet as she arrives closer, his expression remained inscrutable. She had once taken pride in being able to read him easily. Perhaps he covered it better now. Perhaps she had never truly been able to read him since the beginning. _

_This feeling, marred with disappointment and betrayal, jealousy too…. she wondered if she would be free of them all._

_The other stood further back. Waiting for her, a small, dingy boat behind him, to take them both away to a destination set by the iron ruler. _

_She saw him, taking off his cloak, walking towards her as he covered the remaining distance between them both. His expression appeared apologetic, but she dared not to assume anything any longer. Her tears dried long before she completed half of her walk. No anger. Pure shock vibrating to the core at the humiliation. Not that it was any stranger but to have it happened consistently throughout her life by different perpetrators…_

_She heard him calling for her, but she no longer longed to have her name dancing on his lips. _

_She continued, ignoring his pleads as she headed straight to the smaller man before she fell onto her knees. He placed an old blanket over her shoulder, making sure she was covered before he helped her onto the boat. _

_Away from the cursed place. _

_Away from him. _

_\------------_

The ship swayed violently; the storm has lasted for three nights. Their room is lit poorly. Sansa sits at the edge of their bed; Tyrion gently easing her blistered feet into the small bucket of warm water. She could not help but moan quietly – the heat stings at first but brings comfort by muting the pain. Tyrion hides his smile at her response. Sansa has squirmed her reluctance initially when he first started fussing over her, but his look silences her protests.

It is not so much as trying to make her likes him. Such is never a possibility thus thinking much into it is absurd. He has known Sansa from when she is just a simple youth. He has learned to offer her protection from Joffrey’s abuse and while he is still alive, he refuses to see she becomes another tyrant’s plaything.

She is so much more than that. She deserves her prince, her knight even when she is more than capable of saving herself. She deserves that experience; to love and be loved.

He is more than pleased to help her find him.

But in order to find him, she has to live. In order to live, she has to pretend to be his.

It has been a week and he still insists on soaking her feet with warm water before she sleeps. They have not yet talked about the event that had transpired. The one that leads them both in this very room, swaying with the waves. Today, she feels inclined to address it. Tyrion wrings a cloth, dampening it with the water meant to be rubbed against her feet. Sansa takes it away from his hand, offering him a tight smile before asking him to take a seat next to her.

“Why did you it?” She lifts her dress just enough for her to bend down and gently dab the sole of her feet.

Tyrion has ample time to answer that very question. He has prepared what he thinks would be a satisfying answer, one that justifies the deed, hoping that she would accept it albeit he is more than sure it would not be as simple as one he has imagined. He cleared his throat, his fingers itching as he rubs them repeatedly against the palm of his hand.

“My mother died giving birth to me. My father died at my hands. I’ve failed to save my nephews, my niece. Jaime, Cersei. The whole population of King’s Landing…I must save someone. I have to save you.”

Sansa listens to his prepared speech, noticing how the intonation feels dead, merely regurgitating answer committed to memories, one he has repeated a thousand times to himself perhaps.

_The war has broken him too. _

The Tyrion that she knows is almost always confident, even Joffrey knew not to test his uncle’s patience and sharp tongue. The Tyrion sitting next to her now is haunted by the ghosts in Queen’s Landing. His judgment clouded and his confidence plummets to the ground creating a crate so wide, one would spend days walking to reach the end from the other.

“It serves your conscience more. The act of saving me, isn’t it?”

_No._ If he is being honest it is not just that. It is never as simple as that. Sansa, when she first arrived at King’s Landing is the embodiment of innocence own by someone not stained yet by the cruelty of the world. Something Cersei has gone long without. Something rare in his experience surrounded by taunts and mockery. Something worth protecting. Should she die, the world will truly be left at the mercy of cruelty. It is only logical, not entirely surprising that he chooses to protect her. But those are words he keeps to himself. She needs not to know that is how she is perceived by this abomination. It is hardly flattering coming from someone likes him.

“I know you, Sansa. I don’t want you to die in vain.”

“And living with you will offer me the promised joy?” She is not being mean. She is merely speaking free from filters and long-winded words.

But just because she doesn’t mean it, doesn’t mean Tyrion isn’t hurt by it. He does his best to not show how much her words sting. He understands her anger. Her options were taken away from her. It should be expected that she would be irate.

“We are as free as allowed by the mad Queen.” He pauses, rearranging his thoughts before he continues. “I am not asking you to be happy with me. What I am saying is, you could be happy in any way you see fit. I won’t stop you. She doesn’t have to know how we lead our lives. As far as I am concern, we are as far as we can get from her sight and hopefully, with time, she will forget us.”

Silence. He peeks, stealing a glance at her and he is surprised to see it is not anger decorating her pale face. He finds the courage to continue, “I know you could see this arrangement as very far from ideal, even worse from death –“

“Isn’t it? Alive yet shackled. Alive, but removed from home. Alive to watch her burns more cities?”

“Alive and stuck with an imp…” He could hear that thought said out loud in between but surprisingly it is said in his own voice, not hers.

“My Lord, that is never what I meant. What I intend to say is who is left to save the rest?”

Her soft voice soothes his feeling when he learns her concern is not entirely about the arrangement but the fate of the world. But Tyrion is done in saving the world. He has saved one and he is more than grateful to die with that small success. 

“We tried, we failed. Let others try for once. Let just live and soak in what little joy left for us.” His gaze falls on the pitcher filled with wine but he turns away, pulling his pillow and blanket to the corner of the small room.

\------------

Tyrion tries to have small talks. Not much can be done when you are trapped together in the sea. At times she listens and reciprocates. Other times she would just let the conversations die on its own. On one particular day, he asks a question, on something only truly known to herself, Ramsay and Theon.

She is already in bed. Tyrion is rereading the same book he has managed to get his hands on for the fifth time she assumes. His gaze is on the inscriptions the whole time, yet his lips spill the question. 

“I saw them. Your scars. What happened?”

She is about to sleep when his prodding forces her eyes to widen in fear. Her hands turn clammy and her lips begin to tremble.

The horror plays in her mind when she least expected it and they still manage to knock the wind out of her.

Ramsay is dead. Theon is dead. She could continue to live acting as if the experience has never actually happened. A nightmare. Even when the littered scars prove otherwise.

She has her back to him. She knows he is not pushing her for an answer. As she pulls her blanket to cover herself better, feeling as if he could still see the horror etch upon his skin, she offers him a short answer. 

“Life. Life happens.”

\------------

The ship finally arrives at Lannisport. A short journey awaits them before they arrive at the lodging of their open prison. They sit quietly inside the carriage; the swaying motions still brings the content of their stomach at the back of their throats at times.

Tyrion is allowed to keep his title. Too many lords have perished, ancient houses exist no longer. Such might have been the reason why he can keep his and all that comes with the title. Sansa doesn’t know what happens to Winterfell. She chooses to no longer be informed of it. She might have lost faith in Jon protecting her, but she keeps faith still that he would protect the North as long as she is placed as further away than the cold.

She is not a Stark anymore.

She is just Sansa.

She swallows the bile threatening to flood her mouth. She peeks outside, pushing aside the curtain, allowing the rays to enter the carriage. Tyrion is still rubbing his fingers against the palm of his hand – a tick she notices when he is nervous.

She has taken days, mulling over the fate she has to succumb to and hours upon hours of contemplating, she has made peace with it. Part of her looks forward to it. To live free from responsibilities, even when it pains her to do so knowing that there is no more Stark protecting Winterfell.

Her only hope is to be able to see Arya and Bran one more time before she dies.

She breaks the silence as she sees Casterly Rock looming nearer, its size daunting.

“I understand.” Tyrion stops his fidgeting and listens closely. “The needs to save anyone before you feel like an absolute failure. I still think death is kinder, but I understand why you did what you did.”

A rare smile appears albeit fleeting.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“No need for such formality. Tyrion. Tyrion is enough.”

“Thank you, Tyrion.”

\------------

Tyrion has made sure she is placed in the largest chamber Casterly Rock has to offer. It is draped with the finest material to shield the room from the constant glare, furnished with luxurious furniture befitting the Lannisters. She takes in the view of the sea from her room now, listening to the sounds of waves crashing and the fear from being swept by it is palpable. She is a northern girl. The cold together with its silence is what familiar to her. Not the constant beating of the angry water against the rocks.

It is foreign to her. Everything that comes with her exile. Even the sheer size of the room is a lot to digest to her whom by now is too used to sharing a small room with him.

She thanked him for the chamber after dinner after he shows her his, realizing how far their two chambers are.

She doesn’t appreciate the silence only broken by the brute crashing of the waves. It is eerie and brings only discomfort to her. The curtain keeps on flapping, courtesy of the untamed sea breezes. She closes the windows, hoping it would mute the sounds of the sea as she readies herself for sleep that she knows would certainly elude her due to these new surroundings.

After going through her routine before bed, she slides underneath the blanket, part of her marveling at the softness of the coverings. She stares at the ceiling, noticing that she hardly sees any Lannisters’ sigil in her room, nor his. It is a stark difference to the other Lannisters she knows, those who wear it proudly in a form of necklace and bedding, stitch persistently everywhere, reminding the world that they are never part of Baratheon’s - they are not meant to bow to anyone.

_How could anyone miss that? _

She exhales slowly, keeping her heartbeats steady wishing to fool her mind into not offering her the nightmares she could certainly live without.

_This is life now Sansa. Embrace it. Prove her wrong. Prove to her that you could be happy in any circumstances. Even in one intended to make you suffer the most._

Her lids are heavy when a gentle knocking arouses her from sleep. She opens the door, wondering who it could be when she sees a familiar face carrying a pitcher with him.

“Warm water. For your feet. I doused it with few herbs meant to soothe the injuries if they still sting.”

_He remembers._

She is flustered by such kind gesture. “Tyrion, you should have sent someone else instead. It is not fitting…”

He dismisses her jumbled words with a wave of his hand.

“I think I am too used to the routine perhaps.” He pulls a small wooden bucket underneath the bed, pouring the content into it. “Unless you are uncomfortable with it...?”

She shakes her head no. The idea of a stranger attending to her needs is appalling. She needs not more witnesses of her broken body. 

He does not linger after. He leaves abruptly, inviting her to join him for meals whenever she feels inclined to do so. They bid each other goodnights and she closes the door behind him.

Her feet have healed, and she is certain Tyrion knows such. But as she eases them into the warm water, she couldn’t help but smile fondly at the gesture. Tyrion has always been kind to her. More than anyone else.

_There, a kind man you could love. _

Part of her whisper to her. She chuckles at the thought.

“If I have to love every man that has been kind to me consistently…” she tries to list out all the kind deeds she has been receiving, trying to match it with a face. She fails, realizing all along she has ended up at the mercy of evil men.

“Well, I only have him to love then.”

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is meant to be a short story. So I wish to finish it quickly. Any thoughts you would love to share? Happy Reading and thank you dear readers.


	4. Chasm

She roams the castle at night when she is sure there are very minimal pairs of eyes that could sight her. Her shoulders hunched as if each stone is an extension of the dead Lannisters’ claws, shredding her dress, itching to get to her skin, to grab a hold of her before pulling her close to the walls that soon, she will turn to stone too.

At times it is as if she could see her, still a child with her golden hair, playing chase with her twin brother in this castle that is theirs. As if reminding her, she is just a guest that is forced to call the place home after she is taken away from her own. Placed right in the middle of fire when she is so used to ice-cold winter.

She remembers upon taking Winterfell back, how fond she was to flutter her fingers against the stone, feeling the cold and instantly be reminded of her mother’s warmth and her father’s gentle scolding. Of Robb and how he adored her. To this day she still believes she is his favorite – she is the sibling he had awaited for eagerly. At least until he learned that it was much thrilling to play together with Jon since a babe couldn’t really do much.

The thought brings her small joy, enough to cloud her pain as she recalled the time she had waited for Robb to come and save her.

But death finds him first.

She pondered about the siblings she has left, of Arya and Bran. She hopes they are breathing still, making compromises with old gods that until she receives the news of their deaths, all is fine. They are fine. They are alive and thriving and hopefully blessed with happiness that has eluded them for so very long. She prays whatever joy left for her be transferred to her siblings - a trade, even when she is sure it is not much, just to ensure them a small compensation when their sister has failed to protect their home.

\------------

He roams the castle at night too. Reminiscing the past when pain is confined to jeers and insults from his sister and father. Far from deaths he has learned he is capable of inflicting. He sees himself, how the young him used to always manage to find new nooks and cranny that could shield him from taunts as he buried himself in books. Making sure that he has something to offer to his father, earning him his trusts and affection.

Something he could work his whole life to earn but never will be enough to be blessed with.

A dwarf.

A dwarf cannot earn anything. A dwarf makes do with the very little he is flung with.

And he is worse than such. He is an imp that has tried painfully his best to elevate himself to share common grounds with others who are born with it, resulting in the deaths of thousands simply because he believes he could be handy of things he has been repeatedly told he is incapable of.

He is worse than a dwarf.

He is a failure.

\------------

Sometimes their paths cross with one another. Eyes wide with terror of their past reflected in each other somber existence. They nod and they turn, knowing enough that their pain must be savored instead of consoled. Their pain is their punishments. Their inability to move forward past it is what the Queen has aimed for;

To see them dying agonizingly slow, swallowed bit by bit by their own demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hope for this story is to just show how they grow fond of one another. A slow-building kind of love that is not obvious through words but what the characters do to one another. 
> 
> Happy reading. Leave kudos and comments, I look forward to reading each.


	5. Orbits

Tyrion begins to relearn this new Sansa. Some things remain the same. She stitches pretty things into her garments; around the neck of her dress or her sleeves. Nothing too prominent but not amiss to his keen eyes. He would observe the motif on her sleeves closely without her noticing it while they are taking a walk. Almost always there would be leaves of the weirwood tree scattered all over. One time he notices the sigil of her own house other times her mother’s, often buried underneath flowers and vines, trap behind its beauty.

She misses home. But she never speaks of home anymore.

Some things are new. This mature Sansa no longer hides behind the pretense of naïve little girl. She speaks her mind openly, reading books that focus on politics and economy, discussing the pertaining issues with him, filling their walks with exciting and challenging conversations.

He used to marvel at her beauty and her sharp tongue. Now he marvels at her intelligence.

But the other day, while preparing the bucket for her feet - a routine they still keep going, he sees a book he is very familiar with as a child. A book on tales of knights and maidens tucked safely underneath her pillow. She moves to cover it properly; her cheeks redden when she realizes she is caught.

He hides his grin.

Some things are ingrained too deep, it will find ways to manifest somewhere.

He finds it endearing.

\------------

A familiar routine begins to develop as time extends itself here in Casterly Rock. Sansa dresses in modest garments, filling her days with stitching. Tyrion buries himself in books. Sansa would often extend her hours in his library, not that he minds the company. He is very much overjoyed when as days pass by, she looks healthier and as her smiles bloom more frequent, so does this unnamed feeling reside deep in his chest. He could name it, but he wouldn’t. He doubts very much that she would be thrilled by it. Best he be grateful with what they have now.

He oversees the trades and any issues arise will quickly be handled deftly by him. Still, he would find time with her. A short walk before they each retire to their chamber. He brings her everywhere, showing her every nook and cranny of the place he has been raised, sharing her the few fond memories he has with his brother.

Through the walks, Sansa learns that Ser Jamie had been more than decent towards Tyrion. They are brothers. Truly. No wonder Tyrion throws away his loyalty towards the Queen by freeing his brother under captive. Very few people are kind to him, how could he not step over the lines for those that he loves?

Too many times she would witness people snickers behind his back, calling him things that at one point of her life she had shamelessly thought of him too. She bristles with each rude stare, but Tyrion will always ask her to let go, that those are nothing compared to the words spewed by his late father.

Until one day she could not hold the anger back much longer.

\------------

It is supposed to be a leisure walk. Tyrion is showing her the port and explaining the trades that generate income to keep things run smoothly for Casterly Rock. It is a busy day. People bustling through, almost knocking them. She is about to suggest for them to return when a young lad steps over Tyrion’s foot, giving him the dirtiest look he could muster before spitting out, “Disgusting Imp!”

It happens as quick as a lightning, even Tyrion has not been able to properly decipher what has happened. Yet the mere seconds are enough to boil Sansa’s blood at the crude display of disrespect. She whirls onto her heels, her hand grabbing the back of the lad’s shirt. The sudden pull shocks him as she throws him to the ground, yet he manages to scramble his thoughts, daring himself to return Sansa’s cold glare, challenging her.

But Sansa’s cold glare is filled with venom, one she has learned from the very best and one she has sculpted to perfection with the coldness of the North. One that is enough to make anyone second-guesses their bravery. She does not yell to encounter the loudness of the port. She simple hisses.

“Apologize to your Lord, now.”

“This imp?’

A hard slap to the lad’s left cheek. Loud enough to stop those around them as they gather around them in a loose circle.

Tyrion’s eyes widen from the harsh sound and he glances at Sansa, wanting to ease the growing tension. But her cold expression makes even he himself question his decision.

“Wha-“

Another slap across his reddening cheek.

“I said, apologize.”

Perhaps his cheek is indeed stinging from her slaps for his eyes are obviously watery and judging by the murderous look the tall lady is wearing on her face, and the mutterings of the people around them, the lad scrambles onto his feet, mumbles his apology before running away from the scene.

\------------

They are walking side by side, but Tyrion notices how her eyebrows spruce together, still very much bothered from the incident at the port. They are reaching her chamber when Tyrion decides to speak.

“What was that for?” Most of the time, he would let such comments slide. He has lived long enough to categorize which insult deserves his attention. To have someone standing up for him is a very rare occurrence. It makes him itch to know what the underlying reason could be.

“What do you mean what was that for?” Sansa whips her gaze at him so quick, as if him asking her such is an insult on its own.

“People calling me imp is not an insult. It is a fact.”

Sansa exhales angrily, eyes closed, fingers tucking her hair behind her ears before she replies.

There is this thing that Sansa does whenever she wishes for his utmost attention. Instead of bending down to accommodate his height – a move he despises since it feels patronizing, she would kneel in front of him, leveling their gazes and staring straight into his eyes.

It makes him shift uncomfortably, seeing the blue eyes up close, a much beautiful shade compared to the blue sea he is familiar with. He could not help but allow her gaze to anchor him to the present.

“Well, I don’t like it. You are more than just an imp or dwarf or demon monkey to me.” She inhales languidly, buying time as she gathers her words. “You are you. Kind and good and clever. Used to be a drunkard but apparently, you drop that habit by now since I’ve never seen you take even a sip nowadays.” She smiles at him, a sincere smile that hides no self-serving agenda behind it. “If people can’t see beyond your physical attributes than allow me to slap some sense into them.”

Tyrion is surprised with the length she is willing to go to defend him. It is an honor that he would love to cherish. “Then you will have to slap quite a lot of them.” He warns her light-heartedly, amuse with her no-nonsense approach to name-calling. 

“Good. I will have an outlet to vent my bottled-up feelings then.”

She stands up, dusting the front of her dress before they resume their halted pace. Tyrion reaches out, holding her hand in his and daring himself to kiss it.

“I appreciate that. Thank you, Sansa.” He lets go, realizing her astonished look. But she reigns his fingers back in, squeezing them gently.

“You save me from being tortured by Joffrey and Cersei. I doubt slapping some rude people bears the same weight.” She chuckles, trying to lighten the mood.

“Not to others perhaps. To me, it means the world.”

\------------

She brushes her hair, realizing how long it has grown over the moons. Her hands are moving absentmindedly, making her long locks shine with each stroke. Tyrion has just bid her goodnight. Sansa grows to look forward to the moments they share with one another. Her experience in life has turned her skeptical at the thoughts of friendship. She could not stop but wonder what the other expects to gain from her, especially now that she has nothing to offer. She keeps to herself. Only with Tyrion, she allows herself to let her guard down.

It is quite a lonely existence.

She wonders how long she could keep her sanity. She misses Arya and Bran. Part of her, even when properly sealed away still misses Jon too.

That only makes her nightmares more violent.

So violent that she finds herself running, leaving her chamber behind, knocking against Tyrion’s door. Banging at it with her fists, begging to be let in as the horror chases after her, clawing at her back.

Tyrion pulls his door opened and she falls onto the floor. Her eyes swollen, tears apparent from their trails on her cheeks.

“Sansa!”

“Make him stop! Make him stop! He is coming for me!”

Her bedraggled state, her tears, and panic voice send him to the edge. It could have been assassins; sent by the Queen should she regret her sentence. He begs her to stay put in his chamber before he clamors for the guards, making sure the threats are banished from touching her. 

\------------

When he comes back, Sansa has hidden behind the curtain, only her toes peeking. He sighs a relief, pushing the fabric aside, letting the moonlight bathes the whole chamber with its radiance. He pours her a glass of water, urging her to take a sip, her eyes still wild as if at any moment, someone would spring out and hurt her. He had checked. The guards have been ordered to tighten the security even when they have found no threats.

Someone did hurt her. But he is sure the perpetrators are kept in her memories. In that front, helping her could be a tad tricky. He needs to know. Slowly he comes closer, placing his hands on her knees gently, not wishing to startle her. The crying has stopped, her eyes now offer an empty gaze behind him. 

“Sansa…you know I wouldn’t hurt you. I’ve made that promise years before and have I failed to honor it to this day?”

“No…” so soft her voice that he has to come closer to make sure he hears her clearly.

“I need to understand what happened after you fled King’s Landing. I heard stories but I don’t want to believe it.” The stories he heard are hauntingly cruel. With his small physique, he has managed to enter rooms without people noticing. During his short stay in Winterfell, preparing for the battle against the undead, he caught old women whispering still about the things Ramsay Bolton had done to Sansa. It makes him wonder if she should have stayed with him after Joffrey’s death, perhaps he could have found ways to save her from that bastard. But that is futile – wishful thinking, for the cruelty, has been imposed on her and now what left to be done is to comfort her when the past comes for a visit.

“I need you to tell me. Who came to hurt you just now?”

“Ramsay. He comes to hurt me.” Her voice broken, detached even.

“Why?”

“Because he is evil. Because he brands my body as his in the most disgusting ways. Because he is angry.”

“Why would he be angry?” he kept his composure. He needs not to know the whole story unless she offers to share it with him willingly. He just needs to know enough to have a clear context although, by this point, her own disheveled appearance should have been self-explanatory.

It is as if she is trapped in her own mind too. Her words clipped short, her gaze refuses to be tangled with his. As if she is still seeing the horror played clearly in her mind. 

“Because I fed him to his hounds. I doubt he appreciates the irony behind it.”

Tyrion did well in covering his surprise. Who would have thought Sansa is capable of such cold-blooded murder. But the dead must have been deserving, and for that he is glad. Glad to know she has been the one to sentence Ramsay to death. “Well, I think you did a very good job of protecting yourself.”

“You think I did?” Her small voice fills with wonder. Jon had avoided her when he was made aware of the pain she chose to inflict upon Ramsay. Sansa wonders if it is something men will never understand; to be stained in such a way, what she inflicted upon Ramsay at least resulted in death. What he did to her left her lasting damage - physically and mentally.

But Tyrion seems to perfectly understand her position. She remembers the time he listed out the names of people that have offended him. She wonders if at times he dreamt of feeding them to hounds too.

“Yes, you did. Next time he comes, remind him who fed whom to the hounds.” His voice is brimming with pride. Is it meant for her?

“Alright.”

For a while, only the sound of the distant waves is apparent. Both are lost deep in their thoughts.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” She breaks the silence.

“Of course. I insist.” He pulls her to her feet, guiding her to his bed, watching over her as she slides underneath the blanket. As usual, he moves to the other side of the bed, meaning to take a pillow to be brought to the settee where he would spend the night.

She catches the pillow in her hand, forcing him to look at her questioningly.

“Can you read aloud? Like the times you did when we were on the ship?” She bites her lower lip, knowing she is crossing the line with her request. She tries again, wanting him to understand the reasoning behind it. “Your voice is soothing. It helps keep them all at bay.”

She pulls the pillow, propping it against the headboard of his bed, patting it gently. A sign that she wants him to sit close to her. Tyrion gazes at her with the needs to protect her, so compelling and overwhelming that he knows now if things continue this way, it would be hard for him to make true of his promise to help her find her knight in shining armor.

He walks towards his table, picking one particular book from the pile before he returns to her side. He offers her his warmest smile, assuring her that he would be there for her.

It is the exact copy of the one she hid under her pillow. He flicks through the pages, clearing his throat dramatically, earning a delighted smile from her before he turns slightly,

“Tell me now, which knight you want to see in your dream tonight?”

\------------


	6. Bridge

_What are we? _

_Friends? Confidantes? Strangers forced unto one another?_

_She considered the options laid in front of her, not liking any of it as he purposely excluded the most glaring from the list. _

_\------------_

It is hard to tell which room belongs to whom nowadays. Tyrion’s books, together with his notes could be seen stacked against the small table next to her bed. Sansa’s unfinished embroideries could be seen draped against the table in his room, the other, placed over the seat next to the window together with her small basket brimming with her needles, a small pair of scissors and colourful threads together with small jars containing beads of assorted colours. She claims the rays are much softer in his room as opposed to the glaring ones flooding her own chamber. He claims it is too hot in his, claiming the breezes are much kinder in her room.

Fools. Two fools not recognizing love even when it is present in their own chamber.

\----------

Sansa is taking a break from her reading, walking around his room, stretching her stiff back and legs. Tyrion is still lost in his book on agriculture, a topic he is very much into nowadays, muttering something about making the already impregnable fortress self-sustaining should war comes raging slowly; not much can be done if a dragon is involved but to be prepared could at least ensure survival of few left.

_Another war…how tiresome._

She keeps the thought to herself, humming under her breath as she comes across a chest underneath his bed. She kneels before it, her hands already on it before she remembers to turn to Tyrion.

He is already on his feet; his book joins the rest as he makes his way towards her.

“I seem to have forgotten about this.” Being a gentleman, he pulls the chest free, wiping the thick dust covering it from years of neglect. Sansa folds her hands on her lap, waiting patiently for Tyrion to reveal its contents.

He unhooks the latch, pushing it to the back to reveal a myriad of trinkets and drawings within. He looks at them all fondly, memories from his childhood staring back at him, still intact yet with a hint of yellow staining the parchments. Sansa picks up a wooden horse as big as her two hands with a perfect saddle strapped still onto its back.

“You made this?” her finger flicking the soft leather of the saddle, her voice coloured with awe. Tyrion turns his attention from the drawing he has in his hands to her, his gaze turns soft as he remembers the old wooden horse.

“I did. I envy Jaime for being able to ride and back then I couldn’t. Nobody bothered to help a dwarf. I think most bet whether or not I’ll reach adulthood. I learn early to rely on myself.”

Sansa offers it back to him and he inspects the horse, and the miniature saddle.

“I made this. This is after countless trials and failures and me falling from the horse. This is the one that works well. I shared this with Robb to be made for Bran after the fall.”

“How did he take it?” The beginning of the war, Sansa reminds herself. She doubts Tyrion had been treated kindly seeing what her own mother decided to do back then.

“Not well. He’s smart not to trust a Lannister.”

“The wrong Lannister.” She chirps back.

Tyrion shakes his head slightly – amused by her jab. “The weight of faith you entrusted on me is indeed heavy.”

“Too much to bear?”

“Not quite.”

Sansa pushes aside more parchment filled with drawings before she comes across an unfinished sculpture of a wooden knight.

“You are not quite done with this one.”

“Ahhh. I used to dab in wood carving for a while. I gave up on this one in particular when I realize I could never be a knight. I used to think that one day I will wake up and not be a dwarf any longer. Perhaps one day Cersei and Father will not look at me with such despicable loathing reserve only for me.”

Tyrion has a very different upbringing. Although Tywin would do whatever it takes when it comes to his children, he did not do it out of love but the responsibility in preserving the name he inherited. A legacy. She on the other hand, has been brought up knowing love before everything. She doubts he needs her kind words; he is much older, much better in dealing with the scars of his past. Yet she feels keen to say something, “Cersei glares at everyone. She hates every other being breathing in the same room as her.”

She doubts that he heard her. He is busy eyeing his handwork.

“Fascinating that being a small man myself I couldn’t quite find the patience to carve the small details. The horse is much easier to be done with. It is big, and I needed it to practice making the saddle.”

“What is your favourite animal?” she asks absentmindedly as her hands twiddle with the content of the chest still. Before he manages to answer, she quickly pipes up, “Don’t say a lion. I am not stitching a lion for you.”

“Or a dragon.”

Tyrion scratches the side of his face, now seriously thinking of a suitable answer that would still be true instead of made up to appease her.

“I used to wish for a dragon. A small one. The size of a household cat would suffice.”

“Do you like cats then?” She could stitch small cats. Cats would be a good choice to settle with. Something familiar.

“I do. I admire their persistence. I gifted Tommen a cat once.” Joffrey had just killed Tommen’s beloved fawn back then. As if killing an innocent animal is not enough, he had to have it baked into a pie before serving it to Tommen, pretending as if it was a special treat for the naïve boy. Tommen was more than horrified when Joffrey slipped the truth about the ingredient of the delicious pie – one he had gobbled down gloriously. As an uncle, he felt very inclined to shake that nasty brat and put a smile back to his younger nephew.

“Ser Pounce?” She remembers the cat from her days in King’s Landing. Tommen was so fond of his cat, yet he was kind enough to offer her to pet it once. Just once before Cersei whisked her younger two children away, realizing that their sweet nature could offer her prisoner some comfort.

“Yes. Peculiar name isn’t it?”

“You think he survives?” Sansa once sees Joffrey aiming his crossbow at the little being. Her worries are warranted.

Tyrion scoffs. “If he could survive Joffrey, he’d most certainly would survive anything the world could offer.”

“We survive him.”

“And look where we are. Despite the undead, the dragons and their mother.”

A nod followed by silence only permeated by the occasional rustling of parchments.

“What’s yours?” it is his turn to ask question.

“Lady. I still miss Lady.”

“What happened to her?” He heard various explanations on its disappearance, but he couldn’t be too sure which one is the truth.

“Cersei wants blood. She wants Nymeria but Arya was smart enough to free hers.”

Tyrion has always been curious about the dynamics of the relationship of the two. They were not so close; that much he is sure of. “Are you mad? At your sister?”

Sansa sucks in her breath. Shock at his response. “Gods, no!”

She looks through him as if seeing her sister behind him and her expression turns wistful. “Arya is…... annoying.” A slight turn of her lips suggests fondness resting heavily behind that choice of word. “It is a shame that we will never get to learn how best to love one another. Not then, because we were both stubborn. Not back then in Winterfell, because of the war. And now….” _Now we will never know each other_. “But do I want to see her hands chopped off because she has a better sword skill than Joffrey? No.”

Tyrion sees her eyes gleaming with tears she refuses to shed as she blinks them away.

“When I look back at the memory, I thought to myself, might as well be Lady. Arya is my sister. I am supposed to protect my sister.”

She looks down, embarrassed at the possibility of Tyrion seeing her crying. She pretends to be attentive to the carving on the side of the chest, all while taking the time to let her tears dry. But her voice shakes a tad as she continues, and Tyrion notices it.

“Lady is lucky. Even in her death, she still found her way back to Winterfell. Father made sure of that.”

“You miss home…” He could try his best to offer her everything she needs but what she needs is home and this place is simply not. He scoots closer, his hand holds hers tightly - trying to assure her on something even he himself is not sure of. She looks down, hard at the union of their hands, staring at the lines on his fingers as if they could offer her a reading to her own future.

As if they could bring her home.

He takes notice of her lost musing, but he contains all his questions within, choosing instead to bask in the warmth tingling from the touching skins. Realizing how much more he wants to offer to her, to convince her that home is wherever you are loved, and he could, he would want very much to offer her such.

A home.

With him.

Tyrion could feel his heart expand, and weighing him down as he acknowledges the feelings he bears for this young lady already his bride.

But not truly his.

They both release a loud sigh, both caught surprise with the impeccable timing. They exchange a forlorn smile to one another. For her, it rooted back from her desire for home. For him, it comes from his desire for her.

The mere mention of home brings back memories to her. She could envision every minute details of home, even feel the coldness on her skin. But she realizes it is so much more than home that she misses- that she needs.

She dares herself to stare at him. Taking in the years carved unto his face, at his beard – wondering how it would feel to run her fingers through it. She frees her hand and places it on his chest, feeling it beating thunderously before she settles with an answer he does not ask for.

“I miss familiarity. But I know not what that is anymore. With time, comes new kind of such and I wonder if I will remember the one that comes before it.”

A tear rolls down her cheek and he is quick to wipe it away with his thumb.

_I could be your new familiar._

The words echo within him, never freed to reach her.

\----------

Ever since the day he told Sansa he is fond of cats, more and more start to creep up, crawling all over his possessions. He found a grey cat, placed to mark the page he is reading, embroidered over a strewn of beads meant to be cloud, lounging lazily, eyes closed.

One time, as he was ready to sleep, he pulled the corner of his pillow, meant to pull it closer to him when his thumb rubbed against another – an orange household cat snuggling in his basket. One after another, amusing him with each appearance. By the end of the week, he has accumulated a clowder of cats. His favourite is the one he found pressed underneath his stack of books. Of three golden cats perched on top of a branch, only their backs visible with their tails swishing. All in the same golden colour. All in the same size.

Equals.

If he is being honest to himself, he is not that fond of cats; the ones he comes across are almost always angry and ready to scratch him. But being surrounded by her beautiful stitches, especially the one he has just found on his inner shirt - a cat with a kitten trailing behind her,

_Oh well, aren’t you just lovable. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think, basically, i am just writing fluff at this point. Maybe a plot will appear, maybe not. But it is something for the two, so I'll continue for them. Happy reading!


	7. Protect Me

_Sansa notices earlier on how, when she first arrives South how the Old Gods have been properly forgotten. No weirwood trees could be seen flourishing in its old age. She has learned beforehand how they were all brought down to suppress the old religion, creating a void to be filled with the new faith. Imagine her surprise to see an old, mighty weirwood tree residing within the very castle belongs to the Lannisters. _

_A weirwood tree? Here?_

_It offers protection. Some say this is the very reason why Casterly Rock is impregnatable._

_Are you a man of faith Tyrion? _

_I am. Of fate carved by my own hands. But I understand what faith can offer to a man. To believe is a luxury, not all are blessed with. Do you still bear a grudge to gods Sansa?_

_A little. But I do find myself praying when I am failing to grasp the reality. It is in my blood I supposed. To believe. _

_This could be your new godswood then. _

_A godswood should not be meant for a person only. It is mine as it is yours. _

_Ours then. _

_Ours. _

_\-----_

“You idle girl! Where have you been!” A slightly older woman is furious over the little girl’s absence. Sansa recognizes that girl – always running around the castle with only joy up her sleeves as if there should never be a single worry on the madness of the world she is currently residing. She finds herself keen to observe that girl. Carefree, something she has always been curious about when her whole life has been devoted to observing customs, following rules that would prep her to be a proper lady. It reminds her of her own sister Arya, always following her heart and do as she pleases.

Yet it looks feign – the expression on the errand girl at times. As if it is meant as mere façade to deceive the people around her. Sansa sees through such – how could she not when she herself has spent a great chunk of her life playing parts to preserve what is left of her?

She watches from above, one hand placed over the sill while the other props against her chin, amused at the noise that reminds her of home. Here, there is no need to stand up straight as expected of a lady. She finds herself adjusting to being just Sansa – plain, with titles, strip off by the Queen and lineage forced to be forgotten. Her father dies accused as a traitor and perhaps that is the only shoes she must fill now.

She turns her attention to the scene below. The little girl looks abashed. She simply assumes since she couldn’t tell; her face is obscured as she looks down, observing her feet. The older woman looks ready to kill. Sansa disapproves from the distance, feeling the need to side with the carefree youth, “Sonja! Do pick some wildflowers and send them up to my chamber, will you?”

The little one looks up momentarily before dashing madly from the awaited beating, smiling along the way thinking how lucky she is to be graced by the lady’s kindness. The older lady is left alone, daring herself to stare straight at the lady before quickly mumbling her apologies, leaving the compound.

Sansa looks down at her, recognizing familiar defiance before she brushes it off. She picks up her pace, not wanting Tyrion to notice her own tardiness.

She once saw the girl, digging a hole underneath the very old and what could have been the last heart tree at this side of the sea. She observed the girl from afar, curious with what she had in mind. She saw her pulling out a piece of cloth that seemed to cover something. Failed to contain her piqued interest, she invited herself to sit next to the girl.

The young girl didn’t seem to be bothered – she even extended her hands so she could see what was wrapped underneath the cloth clearly. It was her own hair. She must have cut it on her own seeing how haphazardly it was done. The young girl then launched the story of how she couldn’t bear the heat with her long hair, so she simply cut it. Sansa inquired about the hole and the young girl explained patiently how it is a custom to bury the freed strands, with hope that the cold and fertile ground will protect the ones remained attached and the shadow of the tree will be extended to the person the hair belongs too, keeping it cool from the scorching rays. A form of protection.

_Very poignant._

She remembered thinking of such to herself. Sansa has always been raised to respect customs and traditions and this new one, of this foreign land, seems to be safe enough to be observed. She asked the girl to hand her scissors to her and pull her own locks over her shoulder, snipping it with the length between her thumb and her pointer before lumping them over the same cloth holding the girl’s hair, sharing casket.

The girl giggled loudly, odd that the noble lady would want to share something of hers before she quickly wrapped what could be an offering to the Old Gods, placing it carefully inside the hole before they both moved the soil to cover it. 

Few weeks passed by and Sansa swears the heat doesn’t bother her as much as before.

_Does that count as protection? _

She muses to herself because she knows better; no one can protect anyone. 

\----------

“Do you wish to receive news about your home?” her hand stops mid-air before she slowly places her fork down on the table, reaching for the wine instead to wash down the bitterness that has never failed to appear at the mention of home. She takes her time to think, the pause becomes pregnant over time and Tyrion, his lips turn up slightly, watches her gathers her thoughts, reading the subtle changes of expressions flashing across her northern features. He has applauded himself at getting better in reading her and now he is very certain that she wants to be spoiled of what he has just been informed with. She is hungry for news of home, but it conflicts with her new resolution to not care any longer.

A resounding no reaches him from across the table as she picks up her fork, stabbing a hefty chunk of the steamed fish in front of her before she shoves it down her throat. Tyrion has picked up on every small nuance of the way she carries herself around him, around others. Her voice goes slightly higher, with intonation a tad lighter around him especially when they are chatting on nonsensical themes. Upon observation, it is the kind of voice she reserves only for him and he could not deny how pleasant it feels to be blessed with it. Once the topic goes serious, her voice will change slightly deeper. She doesn’t drawl on syllables, but she takes her time, to consider, to filter her response.

Guarded and tight.

The kind of voice she always uses around others.

He makes use of that knowledge in reading her shifting mood. And now he waits.

“But It sounds as if you know something.” She eyes him after she has swallowed the bite, regretting the size of it.

Tyrion hides his grin as he leaves his seat to pour her another glass of wine.

“I keep myself well informed. Old habits I presume.”

She nods at him, thanking him silently for the fresh glass as she brings it to her lap instead of nursing it. She waits patiently for him to share without her admitting her needs to know.

“Lord Glover has been appointed as the Warden of the North.”

Disapproval courses through her. North is Stark’s responsibility. Demoted from King to Warden and forced to make peace with it, gladly, if the North is safe. Yet now, even when they are still Starks alive, blood pumping still, she must live and see how the revered responsibilities are snatched from the Starks, from her own hands and given to a house who has had his doubts in giving his all for North.

She reaches out to grab a few grapes, pushing one between her lips before chuckling to herself. Who is she to call other traitors when she is the one branded with it? “I guess it is a good time to be traitors, gifted with castles and limbs still attached.”

Tyrion is glad that she has chosen to react in such a way - not letting the news taken hold on her mind. “All hail the Queen,” he says mockingly, and Sansa smiles too generously at his jab. Tyrion knows there is not one true villain in real life. Such happens in stories only, in the realms connected to reality through its written form or passed down lullabies where the world is divided into a clear distinction of black and white – of knights and usurpers, of men and monsters. Reality is no black and white. It is a vast land of plentiful grey shades. He is aware of his own sins, of Sansa’s choice to offer them a new player, someone that she, Varys, even himself had thought to be a better ruler. In many, not only his book, Daenerys will always remain as the darkest shade of grey. Uncontested. 

He peers back to the folded parchment, reading the rest of its content. Disbelief colors his voice heavily as he whispers to himself, “She has been with a child….”

“A child…?” Sansa whispers menacingly. With the absolute grace she has included in placing her glass back onto the table she might as well slam it hard since it requires the same amount of effort. She could feel anger filling her to the core, heating her breath as she forces herself not to curse. A child. A blessing, of hers…

And _his._

She learns early that life is not fair, but she could still see burnt children filling her night terrors. Of babes and toddlers burnt to crisps. Her walk of atonement has assured her that she had witnessed all and each of the lives slaughtered because a woman mourns her loss. And the very same woman is gaining, despite the loss she has chosen to inflict.

“She had a miscarriage,” Tyrion concludes after he has made sure he has read the letter thoroughly. Twice. He looks back at Sansa knowing full well what she is struggling with. A child is a gift yet given to a woman that has bereft so many of theirs?

Puzzling.

The sudden shift of mood exhausts her from reacting, seeing how quickly things turn. She could name what she is feeling better once she has managed to reign her emotions. Jealousy. She is jealous of such blessing she has once look forward to but fears once she knows Joffrey. A blessing that she detests even more once she knows Ramsay. 

She closes her eyes and a flash of burnt bundle forces her to force then open. “Am I supposed to share her sorrow?”

“Not exactly. We all have personal reasons not to.”

“My reasons can fall on so many grounds and none will be personal.” A lie. A lie passes from gritted teeth she is trying to convince Tyrion when she has failed to convince herself.

Tyrion blames himself for trying to share what he has learned to quick before he could scrutinize any of it. Yet he questions the propriety in trying to cushion the blows. Sansa needs not such protection from anyone. He observes her closely, understanding her anger before another realization creeps in.

_Could it be that she is jealous of Daenerys for being pregnant? _

Sansa tries to not be so malicious. “She’s young. He’s young. They will be blessed with more.” She would never celebrate a child’s death. Wishing ill to an innocent child for the sin of the mother is detestable evil on its own.

Tyrion chokes his feelings for her as he lays out an option as an answer to his suspicion. “You are young too. Should you…. wish for someone,” he could taste bile flooding his tongue before he tries again, “…. should you wish for the experience, yet you fear that people would question, I wouldn’t mind calling your child mine. You too can have what she is having.”

Sansa is taken aback, and now she is angry for a whole new reason. Her back straightens, pressed firmly against the back of her chair as she stares at him and replaying his words repeatedly to concoct a different meaning if possible, out of it.

_How dare he suggests such when I…. _

_When I what?_ A voice dares her to name it.

“How generous of you. I, for one, wouldn’t extend such kindness to yours should you have any.” Her expression void of any emotion while her voice is cold. A reminiscence of the frozen North. Tyrion realizes his mistake, trying to offer her freedom by limiting her options.

“Allow me to remind you on one thing,” she leans forward, ensuring her words could travel the short distance between the two of them without having its meaning altered, “should you even begin to fill in Littlefinger’s shoes of arranging an impossible marriage or anything of the sort for me with any other; Little Finger paid for that with his life. I wouldn’t find it in me to kill you because I truly believe even if you do what I warn you not to, it is because you meant well. But it doesn’t take much, honestly, to fling myself off the cliff. I did that before. Doing it again might not result in the same end.”

She stands up, her meal left unfinished.

“Perhaps this time Theon’s god will catch me and find in his good grace a reason to keep me. Understood?”

Tyrion draws a long breath, noticing how hurt she is by his words, meant to be kind but resulted in an opposite reaction, “Of course.”

\------------

Sansa keeps to herself that day, hiding in a different part of the castle only returning to her chamber once it is dark. She opens the door, ready to close her blurry eyes, to sleep soundly and daring herself to dream nothing but the pitch of blackness. Yet she must wait for something is odd with her personal sanctuary. She takes in the room, wondering if she has ventured to a different chamber, puzzled by the room made barren from her possessions. She turns around, wanting to seek for an explanation when Sonja appears at her side,

“My Lady. Lord Tyrion made me move all your things to a different chamber. Follow me?”

She follows the girl quietly, too tired to question the why behind the decision. Once she is inside her new chamber, once Sonja leaves, she flings herself unto the bed as she looks around her. She realizes something. She could no longer hear the loud crashes of the waves against the rocky cliff.

Odd. She has grown accustomed to it.

She rises from her bed; her pace slow as she approaches the windows.

Tyrion has moved her to a chamber with windows opening not to a cliff-like her previous room, but to the sight of the grand weirwood tree.

_For protection._

Sleep eludes her as she is now forced to make sense of his actions and her anger earlier on the day. She reaches for the wine, assuring herself to swallow a few refreshing gulps as she descends into the deepest part of her heart.

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been written for quite some time, I just doubt posting it. Well, Happy Reading!


	8. The Love We Choose to Honor

“Sansa?” A familiar knock on her door. She has found her answer too soon, her mind still sharp and not polluted by the drinks meant to intoxicate her thinking faculty. With Tyrion, she feels safe. Encapsulate by his presence, by his voice – she feels not as if he could shield her from every pang of pain in the world, but should they come breaching the threshold, she is convinced he would be there facing it with her. She will not be left alone; he would make sure of that. With Tyrion, she dares to hope again even when she is denied such by the ruler of the realm. With Tyrion, she doesn’t mind a lot of things.

Doesn’t mind him being a Lannister.

Doesn’t mind him being far from her childish ideals.

Doesn’t mind stitching lions for him.

Doesn’t mind how he grips her fingers and places a chaste kiss on it when she has recoiled from any touches from anyone after Ramsay.

Except for the few embraces from Jon…

Such recollections bloom another branch of pondering in which, would she fall for anyone that can promise her a sliver of safety? Isn’t that wrong? To be with someone for what he could offer. In other less kind string of words; to settle with him.

She shudders, shaking away the thoughts. She falls hard for Jon, yes, that much is undeniable. But what Jon has allowed happening to her has negated such feelings. It burns differently now, of rage and unsettling disappointment. Tyrion is different. Has always been different.

Perhaps, deep down, part of her always want their forced relationship to bloom into something meaningful once she realizes how silly it is to dream of falling in love. She recalls her days with Ramsay and how she would always grit her teeth, eyes shut, thinking to herself that Tyrion wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t hurt her. Ever.

She is still mulling when a figure appears, closing the door behind him. His gaze casts down to his shoes, regret still heavy on his shoulder before he dares to lift his head high enough to see that she is sitting by the table, her mind lost, trying to grasp the answer she could feel within her reach, so close to the tips of her fingers yet still so far.

“Are you still mad?”

His voice is the very nudge she needs. It pierces through her strewn thoughts, bringing with it a blinding clarity.

Love is about making a choice. And today, this moment, she chooses to honor the love she deserves.

Sansa takes another swig from her goblet. She wants that false courage often offered by the liquid, yet she does not want this moment to be tainted with it. So she pretends. Pretend that she is indeed intoxicated. Perhaps he would pity her and perchance he rejects her,

She could bury the experience and act as if it never happens.

_Coward. _

“I…I thought wrong. I shouldn’t have assumed things that do not concern me.” He mumbles his apology, trying to explain himself yet the constant silence finally perks his attention.

“Have you been drinking?” he notices how foolish such a question is considering she is holding a half-empty goblet.

“Are you drunk?” her voice turns soft, wondering if she is trying to drown his hurtful choice of words before.

She takes a deep breath, trying her best to mimic a drunk person. The wine sloshes when she attempts to place it carelessly on the table. Her giggle is genuine – this act is stupid and impossible to follow through.

Yet she replies him with a silvery tone, “No. I am…buoyant.” Which is not a lie now that she is clear with her feelings.

“Buoyant huh?” Tyrion purses his lips, trying to cover his smile. He is old enough to tell if someone is truly drunk. Her cheeks are blushing from embarrassment, not flushed from being intoxicated. Something is different but he couldn’t exactly name it. There is a certain lightness with the way she speaks. He doesn’t know why she is pretending to be drunk, but he will be damned not to pretend not to fall for it. “Careful now. Few more glasses and you might just be floating around.”

“Then catch me.” She winks at him. He is mystified by such an unexpected gesture, his head shaking, trying to find his bearing. He feels silly for it. A forty years old man unhinge by a wink.

“Are you mad at me still?”

“No.” She shakes her head before suddenly her eyes widen and she throws his gaze at him, taking back her denial.

“Yes. Yes. How could you say such to me? Do you really want me to have a…?” She is lost for words. Partner? Lover? “A mistress?”

She balks at her own choice of words. It is wrong but it is concise enough a word to grasp the situation.

He understands it clearly and decides to proceed with the truth.

“I wouldn’t lie. I would be heartbroken if such happens.” The look he gives her is enough to strengthen her resolve.

Her gaze softens, her voice even more so, pleading. “Then don’t go around suggesting reckless things that will not make you happy.”

She slides down on her knees, her weight resting on her calves, gaze as sharp as the blade of a sword, piercing through him.

He gulps down his urge to confess. Taking a deep breath, he takes her cold hands in his, rubbing circles into it. His gaze stays on their intertwined fingers,

“I don’t care about my happiness. I care for yours.” His fingers itch to caress her cheek. His mind relents it but they are moving on its own accord now.

“I want you to have everything that you want.”

Sansa bites her lower lip, leaning into his palm,

“Has it ever occurred to you perhaps what you want and what I want could have been the same thing?”

“I highly doubt they cross paths, Sansa.”

Sansa sighs.

_Perhaps I am always a child in his eyes. _

\----------

Somehow, Sansa manages to convince Tyrion to stay with her on the same bed, feigning dizziness. _A true damsel in distress_, she thinks to herself. Tyrion is reluctant at first, but Sansa pulls a pillow in between them – an easily dismissed wall yet enough to convince Tyrion to lie next to it. They lie together in the quiet night. The sound of waves crashing the cliff no longer available to fill the silence filling the room, getting thicker and thicker as moments pass by.

For Tyrion, he doubts Sansa shares what he feels for her. How could she when he is what he is? The only possible situation in which she could turn to him would be if he is the last male on earth and even then, he doubts it heavily. Now that their circumstances are exactly arranged in such a way, he doubts it even more so.

He couldn’t possibly encourage it even if there is a slither of affection, she carries for him. Her choices are already taken from her, he couldn’t possibly take advantage of it. He must be the voice of reason.

Even when that specifically demands him to betray his own wants.

He dares to steal a glance at her. Seeing her on the same bed, chest rising with each breath, just a handspan away.…. he has to quickly extinguish the needs to lean in and kiss her lips.

So close…and yet not within grasp….

It is as if she knows what he has contemplated doing, she leans against the fluffy wall in between, one hand splayed on the pillow, slightly covering her lips.

Tyrion swallows his own thundering heartbeats.

He finds himself scooting closer to the edge of the bed, adding as much distance between them. 

“How does it feel to kiss someone you love Tyrion?” A whisper heavy with sincere curiosity. Such beckons him to whisper back as if that is the only appropriate way to respond to the innocent inquisition.

“You never get to experience that, don’t you?”

The forlorn smile, the shy denial is enough an explanation.

With others, with different topics, he could go to a great length in explaining. But with her, with this question, he finds himself at loss for words. He settles with the simplest explanation.

“It feels right.”

In which Sansa scoffs. Her gaze demands a tad longer answer.

Tyrion clears his throat, stalling, trying to come up with a better answer. He closes his eyes and immediately his mind offers a vivid image of him kissing the one asking the question.

_Ahhh, fuck…_

“You will feel…buoyant.” His voice cracks in the end. His whole body tingles with the needs to press his lips against hers. He curls his fingers hard against his palms, eyes still close, not even trying to chase the image away.

Sansa notices this. Sensing an opportunity, she forsakes the wall between them, leaning in, and boldly, she kisses him.

His eyes fling open but just a moment. Seeing her with her eyes close, he immediately returns her kiss. Slowly but surely, guiding her lips, tasting her. He could feel her molding her entire body against him and he could only pull her closer, one hand at the nape of her neck while the other rests at her back. He grazes his teeth against her lower lips, sucking it hungrily. She moans, pressing herself so close he could feel her frantic heartbeats as he steals the sweet taste he has always imagined belongs to her. 

She pulls herself free, her breaths shallow and close in between. Her gaze never leaves his as she waits calmly for their heartbeats to stop hammering their chests. She is puzzled herself by her own daring move, but she realizes, once she has made up her mind, things are much easier, with no complexity she has always imagined there is to be. She has feelings for him; she acts on it. No one is forcing her. It is liberating for her but when she starts reading into his own gaze, she wonders if she has been assuming too much, “How does that feel to you? Does it feel right?”

His answer is quick. “Yes. Yes, and so much more…” He wonders if she truly means it, or if she is just using him but even if the latter is true, he finds himself not minding it at all. But he has promised himself to be the rational one, hence he pries her hands off his clothes and gently eases her back to her side of the bed.

“But you are drunk, and this is not right.”

He pulls the pillow back between them, even when it has failed to play its part well.

They both lie again next to one another. Both replaying the fiery kisses they have just shared.

It is Sansa who breaks the silence. 

“Tyrion?”

He keeps his mouth shut.

“I am not drunk.”

Moments flutter between them before he replies, “I know….”

“I am aware of what is happening here. It is foreign, yes. To me at least. I don’t know any better, but this? This feels right to me too.”

He could feel his heart expands, stuck in his throat as he tries to internalize her answer. He couldn’t believe it, but he excruciatingly wants to.

_She wants me. _

_Me. _

“You are beautiful Sansa. Someone like you shouldn’t be with me. Shouldn’t want to be with me. Old, decrepit imp.”

“There you go assuming things again...”

Silence resumes as they both ponder. Sansa is the one that has the power to decide the future of this budding relationship. She wants it. He wants it. But he is too cautious, while Sansa is more than ready to plunge deep into the pit.

She calms herself down, trying her best to control her own breathing. She understands why he hesitates. She knows what happened to Shae. She herself has been used, but her heart never gets in the way while he has his return to him after being thoroughly trampled and mocked by all.

“If things are meant to be, the world will bend to make it happen over and over again. Isn’t that right?” She is referring to them and how fate finds ways to place them next to one another. 

“You truly believe we are meant for each other?” Disbelief colors his intonation. He pines for her yet when she comes to him the way he has always imagined it; he finds himself doubtful.

_How could it be this easy? _

“I will then, dare myself to attempt to simplify it.” A renewed bravery is apparent in her voice. She sits up, facing him and he feels inclined to mirror her position. He has played too many roles in which he almost always assumes that he knows better, but per this moment? He doesn’t know, he is unsure, yet he is hopeful, something he has denied himself to feel after everything.

She pulls his hands in hers, placing it on her lap. He looks up at her, taking in her fiery, red locks and he wonders how it would feel between his fingers.

“Does the kiss feel right to you?”

“Yes.”

“Ask me the same question Tyrion.

“Does it feel right to you Sansa?”

“Yes.”

He wants to ask so much more. _Are you sure? Are you alright? Why would you fall for me? _Doubts too potent to be ignored yet when the blue eyes are clear, pristine in her convictions, he feels the unshakeable needs to silence his own uncertainties, pursing his lips into a thin line to stop himself from speaking as he processes their exchanges.

A smile appears slowly, as he braves himself to bask in the glory of simplification with regards to love. There is nothing complex when two people love one another; it is as natural as breathing. It simply, happens – why should we bother with the small details of how and when?

Sansa could imagine his mind working tirelessly to challenge her feelings, to make her doubt its authenticity. She hopes he would not make it hard to proceed because she doubts she would be as brave to try again once shuns away. 

“Why do we stop?” his voice clears away her fears. She could feel her own lips forming a smile as his fingers reach out to play with her long locks.

“Why do we stop indeed...” she dips her head down, her hands cradling his face as their lips met with a newly clad sense of urgency.

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.....?


	9. Surviving Together

The kitchen is still well lit despite the chores concluded for the day. The servants’ footsteps could be heard echoing, further and further from it, as they seek the cold in their room after the heat they have endured during the day. Only two people left in the kitchen, Sonja, tending the fire, placing more logs to keep it burning. The other is the old lady who seems to always have an issue with Sonja’s existence, nit-picking her action earnestly, breathing down her neck with more and more instructions.

As if she knows who the young girl truly is.

Sonja dismisses the thought as she places the last log over the fire, her small hand holding the iron rod, poking through the fire to make room for its last meal of the day. The sound of chopping fills the room; the old hag has refused to leave her alone, always, always keeping her eyes on her every movement. 

The fire sizzles and Sonja quickly stands up, her hands rubbing the dirt and soot against her clothes as she speeds toward the exit, hoping the elderly would not have the time to notice her escaping. She needs to be away. She has a much more important thing to be informed to her Queen.

Halfway towards her freedom, the grating sound of the older woman’s voice put a stop to her strides.

“You laced the flowers in her room with poison, didn’t you?” The older woman who has been eyeing her suspiciously speaks, her hands still busy with the task of prepping ingredients for the pies. Dicing the onions before she begins hacking the meat intended to be the filling of the exquisite treat for tomorrow’s early meal. Her eyes on the chopping board, her stance fix but her words rope Sonja, as she realizes that despite her attempts to fool everyone into thinking she is a mere simpleton, she has failed to trick this particular woman.

_Deny it. _

It is the first thought that leaps to her mind. She plasters the most naïve look she could muster before she turns to the lady holding the knife in her left hand. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The chopping finally stops. She raises her hand as if she wants to throw the knife at the young soul. Sonja flinches, scared at the possibility before the elder decides to flick the knife towards the chopping board, its pointy end swallowed by the wood, its blade glistens with leftover blood. Her gaze sharp, with matching alertness that is not one you see often in the pair of eyes old enough to have seen too much. “Don’t lie to me girl.”

_She knows._

Her façade melts as shadow dispels by complete darkness. There is no point to fool someone who knows the truth. A waste of time, a waste of effort. Sonja smirks, “What are you going to do about it?”, knowing well she has chosen to side with the most powerful player and what could befall unto her when she deems herself important to be bestowed with such task of eliminating the threat?

“You are the murderous Queen’s little bird, aren’t you?” the elder woman looks amused with her determination, the false courage that someone’s shadow would be enough to shield her from any terror. 

“I am asking you, what can you do about it?”, Sonja repeats herself. After all, what can an old lady do to her? When everyone else in the castle, even the lady herself has fallen for her play of an innocent young girl?

The old lady stands up too quickly, pushing her stool to the floor with a thunderous bang that echoes in the wide space with only two occupants. Sonja takes a step back, closer to the wall, her hands hidden behind her back as she reaches out to the iron rod she has propped against the wall after she tends the fire. Her secret is out now, she must quickly silence it. 

“What can I do? About it?” She repeats the question mockingly to the girl whose hand has now gripped the rod as tight as possible, ready to stab it through someone’s chest. A table stands as the only barrier between them as she continues, “Nothing out of my norm.”

Sonja could feel her heart quickens; there is something unsettling with the expression the old lady is wearing. As if she too is wearing a mask all these times… She does not have time to dawdle in such thought as the other begins to speak,

“Tsk, tsk, tsk…pretty, pretty face you have there…”

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter. Tell me what you think. Happy Reading!


	10. The Misplaced Wolves

With her new face, she continues her stay, close enough to ensure her sister’s safety yet far enough from her to notice her presence. She has her own regret from the last battle. Regret that she has trusted Jon to do the right thing. Regret that she could only watch from afar as her sister is humiliated. Sansa is wrong when she said her little sister could have survived what she did. The steel resolution her sister carries still, even when she has been stripped bare from her identity, Arya knows better now; Sansa is braver than what she could ever hope to be. The experiences do not make her elder sister strong; she is, she has always been strong.

It doesn’t take much convincing to follow her sister. Jon. Jon has abandoned them. When Sansa boards the ship, she sneaks in, heading to whatever path her sister is banished. It is on the ship she takes notice of Sonja. She doesn’t care to know what her real reasons, or orders; the moment she sniffs her ill intention towards Sansa she has already counted the days leading up to her death.

Her list has been fulfilled. Not all, but with her enemies all perished with or without her involvement, she finds herself lost with nothing to guide her existence. Her vendetta has always been personal, that is what she tells herself each time she feels guilty not putting an end to the Dragon Queen.

She hovers the cloth she is holding against the wooden door, slowly, not really doing anything to the dust collecting there, all while picturing Sansa’s reaction should she reveals herself to her. Sansa has caught her leaving Winterfell, almost screaming which is alarming considering her usual collected demeanor when she knows exactly where she is heading. Arya remembers screaming back. Something about her list, something about Cersei. She tries to sell the idea of killing Sansa’s own tormentor to ease the rising tension, but Sansa doesn’t want to hear the end of it.

_You are home, Arya. Why can’t you stay? The Starks don’t do well there, you know that. We always lose something with each journey we made South._

How true is that now when she thinks of it?

_Jon loses his sanity. _

_I lose my brother._

_Sansa loses her home. _

She throws the cloth into the bucket on the floor, splashing some water onto her own feet. She is sick of doing chores. She is sick of losing purpose. So sick of not rooted somewhere because she has had the chance to do so with someone she truly cares for, who has been left heartbroken, her answer of ‘no’ still resounding clearly with each passing day. Her once precious freedom now left a bitter taste in her life.

At night when it is all quiet, her loudest thought would be, what would death taste like? How does it feel to be the one experiencing instead of executing it?

Arya sighs loudly. She wants Sansa to know she is here, yet she doubts it will bring any good to either of them.

_Why can’t Sansa just know, without me telling her? I thought she’s so smart…couldn't she tell? _

\----------

Sansa has left her chamber smiling. A little giddy with what has transpired the night before. It doesn’t escalate to the full physical act of love, no, she still has a reservation on such level of intimacy, and she could feel Tyrion shares the same sentiment. It is something they would have to deal with further along in the future as the relationship progresses with time. Now, with last night’s simple kisses, those are enough to leave the two of them with sweet relief that they are now on the same page with regard to their complex relationship with one another.

Another smile blooms as she closes the door behind her. It is a new day; a new beginning, and she looks forward to seeing Tyrion.

\----------

Sansa notices Sonja standing with a bucket next to her feet further down the corridor and her smile drops slowly. She walks closer. The other day she has caught her raven to the Queen. It confirms her suspicion all along and it irks her, how the Queen simply can’t leave her be. She continues to observe the young girl, who has always been chirpy and so innocent looking.

Today, she looks different.

And the longer she looks at her, the more convinced she is that she knows her. How she recognizes that stance, the way that nose scrunches in distaste. She doesn’t understand her own instinct, but she never questions it, nor would she start now. Sansa marches straight at her, and as if she is anticipating her, the young girl turns, head down facing her.

Sansa lets the silence expands between them large enough before she dismisses it with a blank statement. “You are not you.”

The other lifts her head, staring at Sansa as she tries to unveil the real intended message behind such a sentence. Sansa looks closer, eyes cast down as she takes in the stranger’s expression in its entirety. Her voice drops to a whisper,

“But is it possible that you are…” her stare turns daggers, a brief of uncertainty flickers before she presses on, “…her?”

The other smiles wide enough - _Sansa is the smart one. _She pulls Sansa’s hand, heading back to where she comes from. Sansa simply follows. Her curiosity diminishes her instinct to wrench her hand free from the grip.

Once they are inside the chamber, Sansa is transfixed, feet glued to the floor as she watches her closes the door. The young girl, turns, a grin on her lips, a mist in her eyes, before her fingers stretch to her own neck and unveils her true face.

Sansa gasps so loud, her hands jump to cover her mouth; not believing yet not outright dismissing the truth laid out clearly, standing strong in front of her.

“You miss me?” her voice barely audible.

“How can I not?” the elder sister pulls the little one into a firm embrace. “How can I not Arya…”

\----------

Between the sobs come the chastises.

“How could you not tell me?”

“I have to protect you. She’s been poisoning the flowers in your room!”

“You think I don’t know? I am just playing along.”

“That is a dangerous game to play along Sansa.”

“Oh, look at you talking about a dangerous game. With your face mask and everything. Is that real? Oh, don’t tell me. The less I know the better I could conceal you.”

Arya stares at the face she is holding before she throws it onto the table. She bits her lower lip, part of her wants to tell everything she has learned to Sansa, perhaps to brag of what she is capable now but thinking that it would not dwell right to name what she thinks Sansa has always suspected, she turns and throws herself instead on the bed.

Sansa pulls up her dress and climbs after her, filling the empty spot next to her sister. Arya proceeds to hold her sister's hand in hers, reminding herself that this reunion is not imaginary. 

“You miss me,” Sansa speaks what Arya would never admit.

“A sliver. No more than that.”

The elder chuckles not minding it in the slightest. A piece of her home lying next to her. Could this day get any better?

A deep voice calling for her shatters the silence between the two sisters. Arya places her weight against her elbows, waiting for another rap unto the wooden surface of the door to confirm the voice she has recognized.

“It’s Lord Tyrion isn’t it?” Arya’s whispering falls unto the empty side of the mattress – her sister is already standing by the door, her hand halfway extended to allow entrance to the owner of the voice before she turns back to the younger sister.

“Sansa, he could not know I am here.”

“Why?”

“Lannisters are not to be trusted. Have you forgotten that?”

\----------

Sansa understands enough to let go of Arya’s quite harsh reminder. _She wouldn’t understand_, she tells herself that. Thus, she bids Tyrion goodbye, feigning exhaustion and the need to rest for the whole day. Tyrion appears puzzled yet he does not press for more.

But the way his shoulder drops tugs her heart into feeling a slight irritation as to why Arya, after months apparently staying with them, fails to see what has bloomed between the two.

\----------

“What do you mean you couldn’t do anything?! We have Vale. They would come for you. We, we have Tyrion who is basically the Warden of the West now. Together, can’t we overthrow her reign while it is still finding its root?” Arya is agitated. Pacing around the chamber while her sister keeps shushing her to mind her voice.

It is not so much as cutting off roots but sawing off claws instead. Her majesty’s dragon’s claws ripping all that goes against her. “It is not enough Arya.” Sansa has chosen to sit down as their conversation begins to revisit a threshold, she is too familiar with already.

“The Vale comes for me, yes. But that is Littlefinger’s doing. We have run out of reasons to convince them or anyone that fighting against the Mad Queen is the right thing to do especially now after she has proven herself able to lay waste to an entire population in King’s Landing. Who could rival her madness and march still to challenge her hold?” she almost slaps the table to drive her point home – something Arya is determined she is failing to do.

“And I am not in a position where I could call anyone to my aid. I am nobody Arya. She has made sure of that.” Arya’s pacing begins to irk her by now. As if she hears her, she stops, finally sitting down. Her eyebrows still scrunch together, thinking, and entertaining possibilities.

Sansa knows that face. “No one. No one could end this now. The wheel is already moving, following the motion and nothing can be done to prevent it from trampling all over us.”

A conclusion she has come upon too soon when she has first entertained the idea.

Moments of silence pass between them.

Arya pressed her back against the chair, cracking her neck as if relieving it from the weight of the conversation. “How could you say that?”

“You think I didn’t spend hours thinking of possibilities? The only way out, our last beacon of hope was for Jon to take her place but instead, he chooses to stand next to her. Did you see that coming? Because I sure didn’t.”

Her little sister’s fingers twitch against her own waist. She wonders if Arya is reaching out for the sword Jon has gifted her with. She must have put it away somewhere safe. It makes no sense to roam under disguise yet still carrying a weapon that would blow her covers.

“We are doomed. We have missed our chance to make it right and now we are living with the consequences.”

“I could end her.”

“You could. But you have to be prepared to kill Jon too.”

At this Sansa leans forward. She had loved Jon in her own way - being hurt still couldn’t warrant her to return the same pain to him while Arya and Jon share a much deeper bond, one that he and herself do not share as strongly.

“Can you do that?”

The hesitation before she scrambles a fade yes is enough for an answer.

Arya buries her face against her folded arms on the table. Her voice is muffled but Sansa could decipher it still for the things she wishes are the same with what she has always yearned for.

“I want to go home, Sansa…”

“I promise I’ll stay for good…”

The sobs coming from Arya startle Sansa more so than her own tears. It pains her to see the Starks so far removed from their home. She wants to give Arya her home. Isn’t that the drive to win it back from Ramsay? Home. Sanctuary. To be filled with familiar faces. Seeing Arya surrendering herself to the loss makes her thought roams to Bran’s own safety.

_Where is he now?_

“I know Arya. But the realms are beyond saving now. What’s left to do is to endure.”

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. The urge to write is just not there even when all keys for each chapter are staring at me. Why though? 
> 
> Happy Reading!


	11. A Friendly Warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like it when I find the mojo to write. Happy Reading!

Sansa spends two weeks either coop up inside her room or, when she actually ventures outside her chamber, that girl Sonja never actually leaves her side. She joins him thrice for breakfast and even then, she looks occupied. He catches her few times; her lips already parted as if she wants to say something, yet she shuts her lips together not a second after. He is frustrated, wondering what could happen in the span of very few hours after their last kiss but at the sight of her troubled expression, he worries more about her health.

_Perchance she’s having second thoughts about being with me… _

He spends his hours inside his solar, finding himself missing her company dearly. To appease the stretching loneliness of abandonment, he ends up sending an errand boy to find him a block of an old, solid weirwood tree. Not the one he has standing firm in his castle; the very idea of taking bits of it is painful enough to bear when Sansa is very fond of it. The boy does not disappoint, knowing well to search for it from the clutch of an old healer that looks more like a witch than a healer.

The tree is sacred, therefore, by the same extension of logic, anything made from it would have carried the old magic of protection.

He wants to carve something for her. A gift for that briefest moment of possibilities of them together. A beautiful dream that he will always treasure. 

\----------

He carves. His old tools find its way on his table. What he has forgotten, his fingers remember, especially after numerous nicks and cuts – his body desperate not to have more blood staining the blessed wood. Yet Tyrion finds it fitting. Holy gift almost always demands sacrifice and isn’t blood always the price?

\----------

It is late and his own sight has become blurry, resulting in yet another cut; this time it is deeper than the previous ones. He curses, scrambling as he finds a clean cloth to wrap his finger with when a firm knocking against his door echoes through the chamber.

“Who is it?” he hisses through his pain, walking back towards his table as he swipes everything inside the drawer.

“A message for you my lord.” The familiar voice of his trusted servant comes through. Tyrion mumbles incoherently about his ill timing before allowing him to come in. His back to the door as he presses his wounded finger close to his chest, his gaze sweeping across the table, hoping he has swiped any proof of his work in progress.

This is why he has to do a double-take when the door opens and a voice he doesn’t recognize greets him.

“Hello, Tyrion.”

“Arya…?” his voice thick with surprise.

Tyrion blatantly stares at the unexpected visitor, trying to figure out whether he has to have his ear checked because he swears, he heard a different voice just now.

Arya reads his expression well; her smirk is boastful. She presses the base of her throat and demonstrates her skill.

“A message for you my lord.” A voice that doesn’t belong to her yet originates from her very pair of lips.

“Impressive isn’t it?” Sansa’s little sister strides slowly across his chamber, looking rather unimpressed with it.

“Very.” He peeps back.

Tyrion’s gaze follows her movements; shocked and a tad uneasiness appears because the two of them never actually been presented with a chance to be just with each other’s company. She plops herself on the seat across him, resting her legs on his table.

He finds himself amused at the display. How different two sisters can be? Apparently as different as night and day.

“How long has she known you are here?” he has to know how she manages to circumvent his tight security. 

“Two weeks.”

_Ah…. of course. That explains so much_…

A strong sense of relief creeps persistently, calming his rapid thoughts and somehow, upon hearing her answer, the cut on his finger doesn’t throb as much anymore. He couldn’t hide his smile and Arya couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the sight.

“How long have you been here?” He insists to know details.

“How long have _you_ been here?” she quips back.

Tyrion crosses his arms against his chest, leaning further against the back of his chair. He has always wonder what happens to Ned’s second daughter, gone under his sister’s claws right under her nose, refusing to be used as a pawn since the very beginning.

“Impressive.” He nods at her and she returns the praise with an elaborate hand gesture as if waving at crowds after a jaw opening performance.

He notices a small satchel she wears across her chest. “Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know?”

Arya shakes her head, “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“You want me to say it for you?”

“Don’t have to if its too much to ask.” She pulls her legs off the table abruptly and drags her chair to face him properly.

With a serious look she wears on her face, Tyrion understands she wants to address something personal. His heart pounds harder against his chest, something about Arya being amongst the last of Sansa's blood relatives making him wanting so much for him to be given permission to court Sansa properly, which he supposes wouldnt come as easy from the one currently sitting in front of him. 

She is direct with her intention, sparing no need for a carefully crafted, long-winded approach to the subject.

“I want to say I know my sister best, but I can’t. But I know Lannisters, they are never good to us Starks, yet she insists to trust you. What do you plan to do with her?”

Tyrion takes a moment to reflect upon the trust he senses so little coming from her. “Nothing she wouldn’t want to.”

“You fancy her.” A statement, pairs with a look meant as a dare for him to deny. Arya notices things too – she has been trained well to read people and anticipate everything. The observation nudges for more contemplation the longer she spends her time in the castle, especially when Sansa fails to hide her disappointment upon her remarks about the little lion. 

Tyrion takes his time as he mulls over the best way to respond. “Fancy is a very mild way to put it.” A pause, as he runs his finger gently against his own rough lips, memorizing.

“I have strong feelings for her.” He has this feeling she would have balked if he ever chooses to use the word ‘love’. 

“Strong enough to keep her safe?”

Funny she doesn’t look surprised at his confession. He addresses her concern quickly, “Who do you think saved her from the Mad Queen’s wrath?”

Arya looks unimpressed. “Try harder.”

“Care to go into specifics?” he is very much open for suggestions.

In which it is her turn to gather her thoughts. Arya remembers how she used to hate Sansa with every fiber of her being. At one point, even having her name on her list, blaming her for the loss of their father. But now she is much older, it is the fact that she only manages to draw very little good memories between them that saddens her. She rummages through the long almost forgotten memories, of Sansa insisting to be the damsel in distress every time they acted out famous stories of knights and their quests among the siblings.

Another memory surfaces, of Sansa wanting to bear Joffrey’s babies.

_Sansa always wants to be a lady. Always dream to have a family. _

“Make her, happy. She loves you, somehow. I don’t understand why, but I respect her enough not to question it. I know she has outgrown her dreams of finding her dashing knight and having his babies, but it seems at this moment, it might not be so awful to revisit old wishes.”

Tyrion is caught surprise at the mention of babies. He wants to assure her that such is not happening but the look she bears on her face stops himself short from making comments that would further embarrass himself.

“Take care of her, will you?” A pleading look washes her face. 

He manages a solemn nod.

She looks satisfied somehow and she stands up, fixing the small bundle, pulling it closer to her body.

“And where will you go?”

“Sansa found her knight. Is it so childish if I am set to find mine?” her voice small – as if she is shy to admit she wants the same dream as Sansa’s.

“No. Not at all.” He hopes his expression is sincere enough to convince her that the quest for love is nothing to be ashamed of. Arya grins. As if she senses just that from his answer. He couldn't help but be bolder with what he is about to say next.

“Gendry, isn’t it?”

At the mention of his name she flusters, eyes wide with disbelief, inviting chuckles from Tyrion.

“How – how? Does she know?” her voice rises a few pitches., fuels by the embarrassment that her secret is out in the open. 

“I think so. She is the Lady of Winterfell. She makes it her business to know the ongoings within the castle.”

Arya couldn’t, wouldn’t hide herself beaming with pride when Tyrion refers to her sister as Lady of Winterfell still.

“She’s the Lady alright. What are you?”

“I’m just plain nosy”

\----------

Arya leaves, and Tyrion makes his way to Sansa’s chamber. He pushes the door gently, glad that she does not bar it or perhaps it is Arya’s doing, leaving her sister’s chamber without farewell. He climbs her bed, hoping that he is not pushing his luck.

“Tyrion?” her voice thick from sleep.

“How can you tell?” he could not deny his surprise. He eases under the blanket, moving closer against her back as she has always slept on her side. He rubs his palm against the length of her arm gently, sorry that he has awakened her from her slumber.

“It’s different – “a sudden stop as she realizes she is about to blurt out what is supposed to be a secret.

“...from Arya?” he fills in the hesitation. 

“She left, didn’t she?”

“With a warning.”

“With her sword?”

“With her words.”

“She approves…?”

“I think so.” 

She turns, flushing her face against his chest. He pulls her closer, a soft kiss lands on her forehead.

\----------

Sansa falls asleep quickly, yet sleep eludes him as he recalls the news he has just received from Arya right before she departs. It is not a lie when she says she has a message intended for him.

It is from the Queen herself.

An invitation to her castle. An invitation in which they have no choice but be obligated to fulfill.

_What does she want now..._

_\----------_


	12. Red

_ Highgarden  _

The sea is rough and does very little to ease Sansa’s queasiness of being summoned by the Queen. She wants to be left alone, parts of her want Tyrion to go in his own but doing so would leave him without support. Alone, with the dragon.

_I couldn’t allow that. _

So, she persuades herself to board the ship and heed the calling. Pretending that she is on her way to see an old friend, tricking herself into thinking that it is Margaery that would be waiting for her there instead of the pale-haired Queen.

Even when she knows for a fact that Margaery’s ashes are scattered in King’s Landing.

Turns out Queens are very fond of fire as a means of destruction.

\----------

Tyrion knows well that this visit is a burden enough for him, for her more so. Waltzing to enter a dragon’s nest? That is hardly an occasion one would want to be involved in. He couldn’t guess what the underlying reason could be for such needs to have them close to her proximity when both parties loathe one another, not even pretending to be civil anymore.

So, he simply distracts himself with the gift he has finally done with, lying quietly inside his pocket, with his books, with watching her stitching beautiful embroideries on her gown.

\----------

They arrive, they have settled down in their chamber and still, no one would have told them the real reason behind what they have now seen, from the flurries of servants preparing the palace, what appears as a celebration, a banquet for all the lords and ladies of noble houses later that evening.

They both grown restless.

\----------

Tyrion helps Sansa ease into her gown. Muted red, a modest plunge with regard to the neckline cinched at her waist before its’ length cascades to the floor. Scattered on the soft material are countless golden roses; 

Sansa’s way of paying homage to the one friend kind enough to trade place with her as Joffrey’s intended.

Of Lannisters’ colors, matching his own. 

Once he is done with the elaborate buttons across her back, he falls back, taking in the breath-taking vision in front of him. He could feel his breath hitches and Sansa seems to notice it too.

“I’m not done yet Tyrion.”

“I am already swooning my lady but by all means, suffocates me with your beauty.”

Sansa’s laughter stuns him into submission and he sits quietly, watching her parts her hair, braiding it loosely before pulling it all into a bun. A style not rigid, with room to breathe and few tendrils escaping.

_Perfection._

\----------

Sansa brings with her no pieces of jewelry, no refinery most ladies would have laden, drape ridiculously across their bodies, even when Casterly Rock is heaping with those. Tyrion knows now Sansa cares very little for such display which is why he decides to turn his gift to a simple necklace -

A wooden carving of a wolf’s head as a pendant, attached to a thin length of gold.

But looking at her now, a fiery beauty paradoxically hailed from the cold north, his gift seems so insignificant. What she needs to complete her is a golden crown and people would have worshipped her.

\----------

She peers at her own reflection in the mirror, tucking a stray hair behind her ear before she turns to him, eyes bright as if she knows the exact effect, she is giving to him.

“How do I look?”

Tyrion couldn’t stop himself from mirroring her wide smile, his hands on his chest before he exhales languidly.

“Do we need to leave this chamber? I don’t want others to suffer being outshined by you.”

Her cheeks lift high up from the force of her smile. A little shake of her head -half-heartedly dismissing his high praise. Truth be told, she enjoys his attention a tad too much. 

“Or is such the intended purpose? In which I will be honored to escort you to the celebration, although you might have to suffer from people shifting their attention to me instead of you.”

Sansa shifts her weight onto her feet, watching the hem of her gown drapes at perfect length before it touches the floor ever so slightly.

Tyrion does not cower under the spell of her beauty but his heart aches more so at the moment, as he realizes how much, tonight, as compared to any other night, he wishes he is indeed the handsome knight she had always dreamt of.

Sansa recognizes that pensive look on his face almost immediately. She kneels in front of him, very little regard places on her fine gown when even Tyrion extends his hands out to stop her from ruining.

She doesn’t care. She searches for his eyes, her palms resting against his coarse beard,

“Let them look at us.”

“Not me…. “her hands roam against his chest, straightening the non-existing wrinkles. His gaze follows the movement of her long fingers, wanting so much more before he places a restraint unto his vivid imagination.

_Not yet..._

Sansa continues, her fingers fixing his collar_,_ “...not you…. but us.” Her tone suggests finality, for her words to be left unchallenged.

Tyrion nods, swallowing his thoughts before his hand disappeared into his pocket.

“I have something for you.”

He fishes out the small trinket, chastising himself for failing to consider placing it inside a small box adorned with jewels or even placing in a small satchel made from the finest brocade. His heart thumps fast against his chest as he scoops her hand and placing it in her awaiting palm.

He hesitates a second before he finally moves his hands away, allowing Sansa to look at the small token he has worked so hard for.

She gasps; her response breathes immediate relief to Tyrion – _she likes it, _as she takes in the intricate detailing of the pendant. _Lady!_ Her mind immediately conjures her dire wolf’s image from her memory despite the pendant not having its color.

He is pleased to incur such a reaction from her, taking in the small hitch of her breath as a sign of adoration, as she runs the tip of her fingers against the wooden wolf.

Allowing her few moments to regale at the craftmanship, he picks it up again, and Sansa looks irritated at first to see it leaving her hands.

“May I?”

She nods her consent and with a swift clasp, the dainty chain hung delicately against her skin. A random thought muses her as her hand grasps the pendant, how the Lannisters do love chaining their women. She remembers Joffrey gifting her a necklace too, with a distasteful lion as its crowning glory. But this one doesn’t feel heavy. This one is special for her, because of him. 

“Is this the reason your hands are decked with cuts?”

“I supposed I didn’t hide it well, did I?” his hands rest against his back, a movement he has used too frequent each time she inquires about them.

She shakes her head at him, her shoulder drops as she leans in and pulls them both in her hands, looking intently at each healed wound before she brings his fingers to her lips and kisses each cut slowly.

“Oh Sansa…please don’t…” yet his voice wavers and Sansa takes pride in eliciting such a reply from him. it is new, they never venture far from kissing and the invitation from the Queen has dampened their spirit to try to be more intimate physically. But the fact that Tyrion never pushes her to give more, excites her. The feelings of being in control and having her boundaries respected is something that has always been foreign since the moment she sets her feet so far South. It is new and knowing Tyrion, who never even attempt to steal a kiss from her even when he is more than entitled to that since before when they are newlyweds in King’s Landing.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t leave…” she whispers against his jaw, her own forwardness puzzled her as her heart beats harsher against her chest. Of course, she could never imagine coupling as something exciting as she could only draw a comparison from her own horrid experience. She has always hoped that Tyrion would show her kindness and leads them both.

_As swiftly as possible_…because she can only relate the act with pain, and more pain before it ends abruptly and leaves her with a moment of peace before it begins again.

Yet she still couldn’t help but wonder if it will be different with him.

Tyrion closes the small gap between them and nuzzles his beard against her neck, daring himself to kiss her there. Her reaction is almost immediate; a shiver and a sharp intake of breath.

She pulls back, somehow surprise with her own reaction before his hands grip her shoulder firmly and his lips inch closer to hers before he stops, and waits…

She chooses to press her lips against his, possibly harsher than what she intends yet he takes it in a stride and returns it with the same intensity.

_More…_

_I want more…_

It is when she starts to gasp that he takes it as a sign to stop. His fingers barely touching her swollen lips as he has to force a distance between their two colliding bodies.

Her gaze rich in questions, and doubts before he fills in the groaning silence.

“We are already late.” Tyrion reminds her.

Sansa pouts and that only shaken his already wavered resolution to a measly puddle on the floor.

A gentle knock, and a voice reminding them to hasten.

The moment has passed, and Tyrion clears his throat, his mind scrambling for control. Sansa stands up abruptly, she too is trying to regain a sense of clarity of her mind, swallowing this emerging wanton wants that she could not fathom and couldn’t dictate its beginning.

She has already taken steps toward the exit when a familiar rough hand catches her right in a firm grip.

His voice husky, the remnant of their intimate connection as he delivers a promise to her,

“I will show you when it is properly done it could be something you would crave for.”

She is definitely counting on it.

“Would I be in pain…?” she could not help but timidly ask.

Tyrion is reminded by her abuse in the hands of Ramsay. He shuffles on his feet, wondering if she could ever be free of it before a burgeoning resolve strengthens within him to erase that bastard’s touch and memories from gripping her permanently. He wants to assure her that he would never be him but making such promises to her will only remind her of the experience. He settles with a light answer, one that would carry the buoyancy of the moment,

“Hardly. Even if there is, it would only be a good pain that lingers to remind you of me.”

Sansa doubts it extensively, yet she could feel a rush of blood on her face. He notices; nothing could escape his careful observation and as he presses his lips against her knuckle, he couldn’t help but comment at the sight,

“Your blush matches your gown.”

She looks down as if she has forgotten the shade she has chosen to wear that evening. Tyrion loves to see her coldness melting, wanting to believe that it is his presence that thaws out the ice within her. 

And perhaps being lulled by sudden depravity, he couldn't stop his mouth from making another comment, 

“I would love to see it matches your hair and your hair only." 

Sansa is taken aback by the comment but she would be lying if it doesn't send a shiver down her spine. 

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Reading! 
> 
> I always see the ruler ends up in Highgarden when King's Landing is no longer an option. It is a rich land after all. Leave comments if you please and I can assure you that I am always looking forward to reading it.


	13. Of Him, Of Her

They walk next to one another, escorted by the Dothrakis. It doesn’t sit well with Sansa. It reminds her of the walk she is forced to take back then.

_Is this a new norm now? The Queen invites and she complies just to relieve that one memory? _

Her fingers tremble slightly. She gathers them in front of her – a small ball of tremor she presses hard against her stomach to keep them still. Her shoulder is stiff, and she is aware of the fact that Tyrion could tell she is not pleased with the arrangement. But it is not something they have a choice in, which is why she tries her best not to look at him. He needs not to feel responsible for steering all harm away from her; harm is persistent and there is not much one could do if it decides to make its presence known. From afar she could hear festivities; booming laughter and music. It exudes warmth yet she feels only coldness surrounded by killers. 

She dares herself to steal a glance, eyeing them one by one every now and then, wondering if the Queen assigns her to be escorted by the same men that guard her back then. She couldn’t tell but Sansa couldn’t help but notices how their eyes seem to have lost the glint of manic, only to be replaced by a caged look. With that, she feels a surge of pity. Truth to be told, she knows not much about Dothrakis but she knows an awful lot about being caged; she was once a little bird caged in King's Landing, was once a cub, caged in her own home. Perhaps she knows very little but one thing is certain, they are never meant to dwell in one place for too long. They need to move as much as the livings need to breathe. 

And the Queen has taken her roots in a land so foreign to them.

It must have been suffocating.

\----------

Tyrion’s arrival is announced, and she hides the sharp pang with a pale smile as she takes notice of how her name is omitted from it. She is no one then. Far from what she has ever thought she could be.

Tyrion, heart magnanimous with the kindness she doesn’t deserve twirls her around the hall, from one lord to another, reintroducing her as Lady of Casterly Rock, as his wife, with an intonation that dares the listeners to question its legitimacy. For that, she is thankful.

She squeezes his hand three times, sending gratitude she couldn’t express through her lips. She carries herself gracefully; she has indeed been trained to impress the court, even when the whole lot of them steer away from her as if she is a disease - an unfathomable one as it is as she both draws their attentions and repels them in the same appearance. This is not new, a mere reminiscence of her days in King’s Landing when she was a plaything for Joffrey. She has Tyrion then, even when she has let him known that his presence is not welcomed – he has stayed still, to shield her out of kindness perhaps that she, a mere pup back then, is trapped beneath the claws of the lions and the lioness in a game she couldn’t even begin to imagine its gravity. She has Tyrion now – some things remain the same, and she is glad that Tyrion, of all things, is her constant. She stays by Tyrion’s side, and out of the corner of her eyes, she sees the new Warden of the North.

The moment their gazes fall unto one another, Sansa bites her inner cheeks, trying to numb the pain in her chest - _the Starks have truly left Winterfell. _

The new warden nods his head to her direction, perhaps a sign of respect since the North couldn’t possibly truly forgotten that she still is, always has been a Stark no matter how many times she is cloaked differently. But _oh gods, _she wants it so bad to mean he feels the clawing guilt and how undeserving he is of such honor. He has fled battles and yet elevated to such position?

_It is true then, only cowards survive. _

Tyrion has immersed himself in a conversation with new lords she cares not to name and somehow, being surrounded by strangers, she finds herself dizzy with the realization that it has been years…years since she last sees Robb and his infectious smile. She couldn’t name the reason behind the sudden onslaught of memories of him; she needs not any reason to miss her family, she always misses them dearly. But tonight, she misses her brother. Could it be that it stems from the fact that Robb has died in a feast as similar to this one? She remembers little things about him - how girls swoon over the young lord and how annoying it was to her. How he used to scratch his ear whenever he was lying and the day he stopped when she pointed it out to him. The two had been close, her brother had been said to be very eager for her arrival.

_Robb loves me. _

_He adores me._

_He would have saved me in a heartbeat. _

_Except he didn’t…_

_And oh, how much he would have frown and shake at the betrayal; to see his sister knowingly choose to spend her life loving a Lannister? When his own life, his babe, his wife was killed because another Lannister had orchestrated his deaths so malevolently?_

But the living has continued to fight for survival, and for daring to survive and to endure, all the little and mighty decisions have sent her to him again.

_Oh, Robb are you mad? Is this your anger I am feeling from beyond? _

She knows it is futile, she knows damn well the dead can never rise again and remain the same, but somehow her gaze roams over the guest, searching for that smile once again.

Searching far from approval but perhaps minute forgiveness.

But instead, she sees her. Standing proud with Jon, her hands cradling her growing belly.

\----------

Her breaths are stolen from her and for a while, only silence drapes the hall. Her ears are ringing still from the announcement of her arrival.

She recalls the day Tyrion receives news that the queen has suffered from a miscarriage. At that moment, witnessing the glow of a woman carrying a child within her, she could finally name what she couldn’t admit back then; jealousy.

Pure, unfiltered, ugly jealousy. Rearing its head from its deep slumber and roaring its presence to the one person who has once sworn that it is never personal between her and the queen.

It has always been personal between her and the queen.

Tyrion tugs her right hand; the concern is etched greatly on his feature and she could not even mask her shock.

“I was told differently…” he tries to placate whatever it is that is so obvious to him as he reads her reaction.

“What do we call the young of a wolf and a dragon…?”

A soft lingering whisper from her lips. An echo from a life she has dared to dream. It is not a question needs to be answered by him because at one fleeting point of her life she has known what the answer is –

_Mine…_

_\----------_

He could tell somethings shift within Sansa the moment the royal couple arrives. The Queen and… Jon Snow.

He heard about the wedding, of course. How could he not succumb to the habits of keeping tabs on everyone when that is the one thing, he prides himself with? He would never rival the connections, the intricate webs Littlefingers and Varys had once spun, but considering their deaths, his connections are by far the most complex, dare he says even surpassed whatever meager connections the Queen possesses. He was told the ceremony is a private one, which should have alerted him; why oh why a Queen that lives on being swarmed by attention and glorified by the rest would stop herself from making a huge celebration of such union?

He takes a sip of his wine and shakes his head as he realizes that the Queen has been quite smart. She waits until she could prove that she could bear an heir, an issue that has been contemplated times before when he was her Hand and once it is proven possible, only then she parades Jon to all.

He could not help but wonder if Jon is happy with the arrangement. From a bastard to an heir to a…Prince Consort, of a Queen none, could tame. If Tyrion is being honest with himself, he couldn’t fathom how the remaining realms standstill to this day, how it just does not crumble when its Queen remains impulsive and her council is filled by people too scared to form an opinion that goes against her whims.

Hurmm, perhaps it doesn’t take much to keep the realms at peace. People with ideals are the ones making the quest seem so noble and complicate the whole process when in reality it takes only another Mad Ruler and her wrath to silence other players….

….while the rest whittle away and force yet again to endure...

_We are back to the days of her father’s reign; the wheel is back to its initial position. _

_It is either the wheel or the players being broken. _

_And the wheel wins. _

_Mightier it is than dragons. _

He catches the Queen’s gaze, repeatedly finding its mark on _her_. And _her _has kept her gaze everywhere but the Queen or even Jon.

Sansa is rattled by the pregnancy, that much is obvious when paired with her night terrors of burnt children that will haunt her until the end of her breaths. 

Looking at the two, he understands why the Queen is rankled by Sansa’s presence, even when it is she, who extends the invitation. Sansa gives a face of those who question her rise to the throne, of her own doubts, and it has always been easy to hate something, someone, an enemy that you can see instead of mere intense palpable emotions or perceptions you could not get a hold of.

But it is Jon’s gaze on Sansa, an unreadable expression that catches him off guard. So he decides to tune out the noises and focuses on dissecting it. Because he always couldn’t bear the inability to understand something – a riddle begging to be solved when it presents itself in front of him. The intensity of his gaze…a mixture of disappointment directed at his own cousin – that much he understands, yet the yearning, made obvious in his eyes is something he could never truly fathom.

A persistent tug on his heart, reminding him of the things she has said in the ashes of King’s Landing.

_What meaning left at the name Stark once cloaked by Baratheon, Lannister, Bolton, Tully…. even a Targaryen?_

A memory of Jon, offering his cloak to Sansa, one she has refused as she walks towards him, the imp.

Suddenly it feels as if all the air in the hall is sucked out, living him breathless at the realization. He has always thought those are just empty words, meant to belittle Daenerys. They are supposed to carry no weight, none at all.

_Or is it the truth? Layered with anger that makes it easier for them to be wrongly perceived? _

He looks at Sansa, her beauty radiant yet now slowly polluted as he questions her sincerity, He looks at Jon, whose gaze never leaves Sansa as if silently yelling at her, _Look at me!_ even when the Queen tries to steal a moment from him.

_Isn’t this familiar? _He curses to himself. The realms could split yet love finds its way to be the center of everything. Again, and again from the same families. Before, it was Rhaegar and Lyanna and now….

A tale favored by both noble and common people, of what could have been a story of their time, of a secret prince, a queen, a maiden, with an imp in between.

The Queen is dangling what she has coveted in front of Sansa. She is gloating and the invitation makes sense, finally.

And not for the first time, it pools again, the doubts of why Sansa Stark would choose him, and how now, the doubts have chosen to unveil its face…

Of fire yet with snow as his name.

\-----------

“Tyrion, another?” Sansa’s hand hovers over his, a polite attempt to stop him from reaching out to the pitcher. She could have sworn she has never seen him reaching out for more than two modest measure of wine in the months she has spent with him, yet tonight it is as if he reverts to the infamous drunkard Lannister.

She is puzzled. Should there must be a person left irritated by the turn of event, it should have been her, yet Tyrion is the one reacting strongly to it. Sansa turns her attention to the length of the table, wondering if she has missed something that could have upset him.

She leans closer to him, his face flushes with boiling resentment and at that moment the Queen and _him_ and the babe be damned, _my husband is hurting_, as she whispers words only meant to be heard by him,

“Tyrion, my love, what is the matter?”

His movement stops immediately, his eyes narrow before he lowers his goblet defeatedly to his lap, his gaze following the crowds as they call for the royal couple to dance, to celebrate, watches the two as they fulfill the call and he could only feel anger, being trap in this mess.

He wants to love Sansa. He already has, with such intensity that scares him. It is new and he, the old decrepit he, has never fallen for someone this hard. Never want someone so much it hurts. They have been happy or at the very least, begin their new chapter together. But this revelation soils whatever budding love they share with one another and he could not stop himself from being angry at her, at the Mad Queen, at the bastard and at himself.

How can he compete with Jon? He could win over Joffrey, could be a prize over Ramsay but Jon?

A gust of hot breath is released from his lips as he scoffs at her choice of word.

“Love?” he turns to Sansa, demanding her attention.

“My love?” he repeats her call, his voice thick with mockery and the way Sansa looks at him, with concern and care no longer endearing but irritates him to the bone.

_Lies…Your heart is never mine…it is his isn’t it? _

“What is the matter you ask me? Why don’t you take a guess?” his own voice rising to match the rackets of the celebration.

Sansa leans away from him, her elbows digging into the arm cushions of her chair, perplex at his uncalled intonation. First puzzled, and now she could feel her own anger rising at Tyrion’s sudden change of demeanor. She could not identify the beginning of his resentment; it comes so sudden it baffles her. She will not tolerate this on top of everything that happens tonight, this, the change of her constant, is the final straw that unraveled her own self-control.

“I will not be addressed in such a way Tyrion. Not now, not ever.” Her voice harsh and unbending. The same steel Tyrion has forgotten she possesses when months spent together has allowed him to see the softer, mellow side of her. She steals a glance towards the crowds, realizing that her absence won’t be missed – other lords and ladies have all join the royal pair dancing to the music and she stands up,

“There is no need to escort me, my lord,” she hisses between her teeth as Tyrion tries to follow her. She pries his goblet from his hands, slamming it on the table before she grabs the pitcher he has sought out before and fills his goblet to the rim. “by all means, drink.”

She leaves him alone, her steps quick as she maneuvers herself in the crowd, a mere shade of redness, lighting trails of embers in her absence. And it is her absence that slaps some sense to him.

Pain crawls slowly but surely before it takes a firm grip of his heart. Regret blankets him tightly; he has never meant to push her away. These thoughts are just that, thoughts that are neither here nor there.

It is just him, being audacious in his presumptions, fuelled by his own self-doubt.

“Ah, fuck.” He downs the content of his goblet and hurries after her, hoping that it is not too late.

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah... I realize it has been a while since I could really just sit down and type away. Life happens, changes have to be done to accommodate it and somehow it is my writing that has to be pushed aside, oh well cast aside. I hope you are still hanging there dear readers. Thank you and feel free to leave comments.


	14. The Four of Us

Daenerys sees the way Jon looks at his cousin. It is unsettling because it is raw. Unsettling because it breathes truth to the words Sansa has hurled at her. Unsettling, because Jon never, never looks at her with such profound gaze.

Even when they are connected in the most intimate way possible…

She doubts he realizes it. Doubts that he could name what _she_ is to him. Clouded by the sentiment that she has always been a sister to him. Whenever her name rises in one of their many discussions, his temper would immediately flare, as if he hates the mere mention of her name.

And such hurts her more. That he is completely oblivious to the truth. That it is her that could name what he actually feels for the other.

Tonight, it is no different. Her braids pulled up in the most intricate ways, little pearls adorning its length. She opts for subtle hues of blue instead of the red and black Targaryen colors. She wants to appear as an amiable ruler instead of a conqueror. A benevolent queen, hopefully, if such a feat is possible after the number of wreckages, she has been responsible for. The end of the war, won by a single commit of absolute terror somewhat offers stillness and in the stillness she convinces herself as peace, she finds herself losing instead of winning – as alone as her Drogon. Her one purpose she has fulfilled, yet it offers her nothing but emptiness and restlessness. She did what necessary, to win back what she truly believes is hers. Yet it doesn’t feel like winning as much as it feels like a punishment - a dragon caged will never live to its full potential.

But she has won the throne, she should be, deserves to be proud of the wars she has won and the feast is all about that; reminding her people as much as reassuring them that this new Targaryen dynasty will promise peace and an unchallenged continuity.

Her fingers flutter above her growing belly. Feeling a kick and rubbing the spot softly, crooning at the strength of her child within. The pregnancy has been harsh, with few instances of cruel bleeding that repeatedly threatening to shatter her dream of an heir. Of pure Targaryen blood.

The little one clings hard to the life his mother has envisioned for him and she is proud of him. It is always a he in her mind. The world owes her one after brutally snatching Rhaego from her hands.

She remembers eyeing her own reflection before she leaves for the feast. The muted glow of the pearls, the rustle from layers of fabrics cinch in a way that highlights her belly, with beads scattered, shimmering, as if she is trying to mask herself as ocean basking in the moonlight reflection instead of an inferno promising ashes wherever she goes.

A vision in cerulean blue.

But there she is, standing in the middle of the hall, burning red, glinting like rubies…a goddess of fire comes to life.

_No…no…._

No amount of blue can douse that severe shades of red.

\--------------

Jon is angry.

Incensed at the sight of her.

He doesn’t know why. Isn’t even sure if it is anger that is stuffing his chest but it is easier to name what he is feeling like it, coursing through his veins and turning his pulses vicious.

Angry that she is wearing Lannister’s color.

Angry that she is trying her best to ignore his existence.

How could she? Isn’t he a family still? Her own brother she seeks when she frees herself from Ramsay’s shackles. Isn’t he the only family left when Arya and Bran have been swallowed by the realms, couldn’t be traced no matter how many men he has sent for them?

Why couldn’t she be happy for him? He is about to become a father, something he has always been too scared to dream of and yet now is so vividly near, and alive and just plain wonderful.

Jon doesn’t expect Sansa to be warm and trusting, not after what had happened, not after the things they have yelled to each other when she was a prisoner, but he has expected her to be civil.

To at least share an insight over the life she is leading at the moment and perhaps for her to show that she still cares, no matter how unruly the outcomes the realms have to reap after the war, that he still is, will always remain part of the pack.

And now he is pulled to the center of the crowd for a dance when his mind is full of the inquisition of why, why she is ignoring him. Numbing him with questions he knows not how to address or even begin to sort through so each would eventually be answered somehow…

The sight of her leaving the hall, a sliver of red as she disappears, only propels him to loosen his grip from the queen’s dainty fingers as he breathes a hasty excuse to follow the trail of embers before it disappears completely.

\--------------

Sansa quickens her pace. The feast has resulted in every soul gravitating towards its pull and she would be silly not to take advantage of not being followed by anyone. This castle is foreign to her. She dreams about it though, once upon a time, when a younger her clings to false proposition that she could have fled here, sheltered by those who know how to play the game yet without exercising their power to hurt and demean others. Respectful players that succumb too soon because they know not that the rest will blatantly disregard any rules, any limitations of the game.

She tries her best to reign control of her emotions, trying to calm herself but with each too close an encounter with the Dothrakis that remain guarding the night, her pulses quicken to a point she feels faint. She slips herself behind shadows, but she couldn’t keep up with the terror of being caught too far away from where she is meant to be. She is no Arya - that fact is ingrained in all her beings even before Arya becomes what she is today.

She dares herself to peek at the two Dothrakis walking further from her before she gathers the length of her dress, gripping them tightly as if the mere rustling would condemn her to death. One hand extends, pushing the nearest door and to her luck, it opens, and she quickly confined herself within.

Drawing in the air greedily, her gaze wanders, taking in the dusty, dimly lit chamber with few chairs stacked haphazardly. Leaning against the wall is what she assumes from her distance as frames; she couldn’t be too sure with the presence of old drapes covering them. Moments pass, clarity seeps back and when she is truly convinced nobody is following her trail, she walks towards them and pulls the drapes to lie on the floor.

A gasp resulted from a reminder from her past.

“Margaery...”

Her fingers trace lightly over the surface of the painting, following the stream of chestnut brown hair that accentuates her mesmerizing blue eyes as they are half pulled to the back of her head while the rest falls free covering the shawl draping her shoulder.

It is truly her, immortalized as a portrait, a Tyrell’s rose with a beauty that blinds and thorns…. not sharp enough to save her from Cersei. Sansa’s lips tilt upwards as she stares at the picture. Margaery is portrayed as an innocent maiden, yet she remembers how her gaze is always all-knowing, very certain with what she seeks to achieve.

The opposite of her younger self.

How she envies her strong stance.

But for a moment, she was a friend, and Sansa very much values her kindness in reminding her how wonderful it is to have someone pleasant as a company. 

And for the second time in this foreign land, she is reminded how lonely it is to be Sansa Stark. No family, no friends.

She exhales her depressing epiphany and falls to her knee in front of Margaery, reliving the fleeting memories they have shared, the promises of being a friend, sisters even and she laughs at its absurdity. She was promised a knight before they throw her to…not a knight and how Margaery has tried to convince her to embrace her fate.

“A woman in our position must make the best of our circumstances…I remember that still.” A pause, as she is becoming aware that the painting could never answer her back, yet she continues, because this is as good as it gets to a reunion with a friend.

“I am with him now. You are right, he is a good man. It takes another marriage for me to appreciate him.”

“A bloody one at that.”

“But I learn my lesson. I fed him to his hounds.”

A short pause. 

“The bad husband.” She chuckles as she tries to reassure no one. “Not Tyrion.”

Another pause, as she imagines her friend congratulating her newfound courage.

“Although…Tyrion _is _being dense at the moment….”

Moments pass as she contemplates what thought could have clouded Tyrion’s mind. That makes him snaps at her all the sudden.

“But of course, no!” She chuckles at her own thinking.

“Not dense enough to have hounds unleashed upon him. He’s just…. something is bothering him…” It must be addressed soon. She wonders if the festivity has concluded itself and if it is safe for her to venture outside. The small chamber is starting to feel constricting; her gaze falls back to the portrait of the deceased friend.

A random thought shoots to the front of her mind. They _could_ have been sisters if only Robb falls for Margaery if only their paths cross before everything. It is random, but how wonderful is that dream?

“Oh, you would have loved him. My brother Robb.” 

Sansa readjusts her position, making herself comfortable in her seclusion before she proceeds to tell Margaery everything about her darling brother.

\-------------

He runs after her, impossible it is for her to hide, not in that daunting red she is wearing. His pace halts every now and then, he doesn’t want anyone to join the search nor questioning why he is so far removed from the celebration. He sees a glimpse of her before two Dothrakis steal his attention for only short moments yet enough for him to lose sight of her. He hides his ever-growing frustration, walking in the night, his steps echo no matter how careful he threads his path.

If he wasn’t trained to sharpen his hearing, he would have missed it. A faint laugh; memories of it swallowed by years of losses yet its sound is already ingrained in his mind no matter how sparse the instances of it. He knows that voice, speaking in hush tones as if whispering secrets. He wonders to whom she is speaking, straining his ear against the door trying to listen for more,

“…I wonder what hurts more; death by betrayal or by fire?”

His curiosity by now is too much to be contained and he pushes the door open.

“Sansa?”

He sees her sitting on the floor, bathed in the moonlight, and quickly he sweeps the room with his gaze alternating between her and the prevalent emptiness, searching for the presence of another.

“Jon…?” Her inflection is off as if ashamed being caught in a vulnerable moment. Sansa only allows the shock of being discovered by him paralyzes her briefly before she scrambles to gather as much dignity left as she hoists herself up from the cold ground.

Jon is quick to offer his hands.

And Sansa pushes them aside just as quickly. 

Her face reddens, her mind scrambles for any rational explanation that could excuse her action talking to an imaginary friend. In her defense, it is only her presence that is imaginary, the friendship is as real as Jon’s presence in the room. Daring herself to look at him directly, who is wearing all black, ditching the Targaryen red, she couldn’t ignore the puzzled expression he is wearing, words spill out from the confine of her lips before she could put many thoughts to it.

“This is Margaery Tyrell. We…” a fraction of second too late to realize how unnecessary the introduction is – she owes him no explanation. Yet she has already spoken.

“…. were friends.” Her gaze darts to the door behind him, confining her with him in a chamber that seems to be shrinking. It reminds her too much of the time they spent in Castle Black, the time they spent discussing in Winterfell.

A blatant reminder of feelings she shouldn’t harbor for him, which is now gurgling and clawing it's way back to the forefront of her heart.

_No…no….no…..._

She has been too rattled by the Queen’s pregnancy for a second she thinks the feelings she has for him have long diminished. She finds victory in such but clearly it is being rescinded with his lone presence.

_I need to go back to Tyrion…_

“Will you excuse me; my presence will be missed by my husband.” She makes a move towards the door and Jon knows enough to step back and allows her to leave, yet not enough to stop himself from following her from behind.

Sansa realizes this, of Jon, shadowing her movements and she quickens her steps even more before Jon finally reaches out and grabs her elbow, forcing her to stop and demanding her to place her attention on him. 

_Oh, gods how I wish I can hate him or better yet, forgets him…_

But Jon, at one point in her life, has been a comfort. A familiar face she has put so much faith in, part of the pack before Arya comes home, before Bran comes home. At one point the two truly believe they only have one another.

That moment, it is as if she finally has her previous question answered; betrayal. It is a betrayal that hurts much more than fire ever could.

Once she has turned, Jon immediately released his grip on her. His expression is pleading for her to stay put and Sansa seems to agree. It worries him, seeing her so vulnerable. She has kept her lips sealed, never divulging her days caged in King’s Landing nor her days spent as Ramsay’s wife. She has stitched herself anew, only parading unquestionable perseverance in winning back Winterfell, and even when all her plans have failed, she has stood by it proudly behind those bars, in front of Daenerys, and to see this side of her, one that she has guarded so well crumbles- so young, so alone, it breaks his heart.

His thoughts are rapid, picking the best way to coax her to open up to him, to revisit those days when they only have one another,

“You are talking to a portrait,” is all he could muster.

She might have been reading into it too much, but such words spring themselves to her in an unflattering manner, as if Jon is mocking her. As if he is laughing at her and she is quick to flip the blade of the dagger back to him.

In the end, it is fury that she allows enveloping her response. 

“You are a bed warmer of a murderer; whose death counts you would never match. What point do you intend to make? We all do odd things we never think of.”

Jon feels her words twisting a deeper wound than the ones he has ever suffered from, to which he retaliates, anger now seeping through him. With her, it is always intense. His anger, his fears, and others he could not be certain of. 

“Hasn’t she shown you enough mercy? Why couldn’t you be happy for her? Why couldn’t you be happy for me?”

She returns his stare in pure disbelief, “Is that why you sought me out? You want me to congratulate you and her?”

Sansa would never peg Jon as someone who would rub his blessings, his victory against anyone – that trait is supposed to solely belong to those who have hurt her.

_But haven’t Jon proven himself to be capable of such feat?_

She scoffs before she packs enough venom into the words she intends to say, “Congratulations! Congratulations on the ability to sire a child, Jon. Congratulations for her, for the ability to carry one in her womb!” her voice almost shrill with acute rage.

His lips pursed with disappointment. 

“She humiliates me, you allow it to happen. Is that mercy?” she could see him balling his hands at his side, seething with irritation reserved only for her. Always for her. “Joffrey beheads my father and calls it mercy too!”

Jon shakes his head, his eyes closing as if in pain before he lashes out too.

“Cersei, Joffrey, Jamie, Tyrion. You are just too attached to the Lannisters. You see them everywhere.” He is pointing at her, trying to prove a point. “Look at yourself! You are wearing their colors. If I am a Targaryen, then you are a Lannister. No Starks here.”

For a moment there is a deafening silence between the two as they eye each other with contempt, chests heaving from shouting at one another, all regards thrown out of the window. It is Sansa who reacts first; inhaling the cold night air to buy her time, straightening her shoulder with a smile so sinister, gaze full of amusement at the words coming from her cousin. She recognizes the tirade; words she has thrown to him first and now flung back to her hoping that it would carve her as deep as it has carved him.

Watching her, Jon sees how quickly she transform herself back to her Northern roots – cold and unforgiving, steel wrapped with beauty made from ice, only to be reminded of how much he misses the cold North when the South is choking the very life of him.

“What is it about my words that bother you to the core? Dismiss them! With the same ease you dismiss me, with the same ease you dismiss all my suggestions, my words they meant nothing to you, not now, not ever! Why must you keep coming at me, riling me up when you know we will always end up with a fight?”

Her questions force him to ponder on much, one of many falls on how he never stops to dissect the feelings he truly carries for her. To him, Sansa _is_ his sister. Sansa is someone he would always love because of that. Nothing more…could never be more.

Yet how come it aches him to the very core when she yells at him?

How come it is always Sansa, only Sansa that could invoke such pain to him.

_How…? Why…?_

“What is the matter with you?” her voice drops to a whisper only meant for him, but the shift is not a sign that she is about to stop. Sansa is far from done. She takes his silence as an opportunity for her to continue. “I didn’t come here because I want to. Your Queen makes me her puppet. We, you and I and her are nothing to one another.”

The pregnant silence forces Sansa to take a step closer.

“I am asking you, Jon, what do you want from me?” this time, she is asking him earnestly. With enough sincerity that even Jon, in the midst of his anger mixed with confusion could not possibly miss. He is taken back by such simple inquisition. He searches for an answer and comes out with nothing.

Or perhaps the answer is always there, baiting its time for Jon to realize he has discovered it too late. 

“I don’t know…” he said, finally allowing himself to look at Sansa, her face is flushed with anger and at that moment even he himself couldn’t comprehend why his only thought is how radiant she looks in such state, how the blush matches her hair, matches her dress - a fiery beauty that drowns him.

That very thought shocks him. He is oblivious to many things, sure, yet he knows that this is not proper. He shouldn’t have this kind of thought to someone he cares, always, as a sister.

_Unless…._

_Oh… _

Her shoulders drop. She knows not what answer she expects from him yet she is now finding herself dwelling in disappointment. “Well, do keep me informed once you know. Have a blessed night and again, congratulations Aegon.” She turns, not knowing if she would ever find her way back but dear gods, she needs to be far from him. She has spoken too much, feels too much in a span of a night and is now utterly exhausted and shaking from each encounter. 

Jon is not ready to let her go, not just yet. Not when he is at the precipice of naming the actual feelings he has for her.

“Have you heard from Arya? From Bran?” stalling her departure, anything, anything to keep her close hoping that her presence would offer him clarity once and for all. 

“What made you think Arya will come and find me? You are his favorite, not me.”

Jon, whose thoughts are scattered with the new discovery couldn't be bothered to ache at Sansa's reminder, not when part of him is adamant in not wanting to believe in its possibilities.

“Unless, you have committed a grave sin, judgment clouded by the severity of one’s beauty and the promise of misplaced fealty?” Sansa couldn’t resist to remind him of his mistake.

_There it is..._

He struggles, wanting so much more for this conversation to take a different direction. He takes his time, trying to rearrange his wild thoughts that he does not want to validate just yet until he could identify its beginning; a tangled mess of threads no one could pick it apart but her response shows him the end of it.

The end of them. 

“We could never move past this, could we?” he interjects her before she could resume.

They both look at each other as if suddenly, both are made aware of the underlying intent of the spoken words.

“No,” she said.

No to everything that could have been, no to everything that should have been before he has left and bent his knees.

\----------

“Look at them... quarreling like….”

“Siblings?” Tyrion offers meekly. He has gone out to find Sansa but instead found himself in the presence of Daenerys, looking for Jon. Now the two of them stand side by side, watching the other two in their heated screaming match, so lost in it they realize not they are being watched.

Daenerys tuts at his response. “With that kind of passion? More like the two having lovers quarrel.”

Tyrion does not know the appropriate way to respond to that, partly because deep down, he is thinking of the exact thing. So instead, he continues his observation. 

“I wish he is as passionate with me…” her voice wistful.

Tyrion keeps his mouth shut; the Queen is now narrating his own thoughts. 

“For all that we know she has seduced him into submission.”

At such accusation, Tyrion draws a line. Sansa loves him. How much? He is not sure of, but she is at the very least, fond of him. Having the Queen slandering her virtue does not sit well with Tyrion.

“I think it is you who have fucked him into bending his knees.”

It is her turn to have her one lingering suspicion narrated back to her by her once most trusted advisor.

\------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what is happening anymore. They just want to claw at each other so I let them. In my defense, it is not as if Sansa wants Jon but you know the feeling? when you are sure of the one you have right now, but memories are powerful, not enough to sway but it lingers. 
> 
> Share your thoughts though. Would love to receive feedback. And oh, the portrait of Margaery is based on this one fanart by metalheadJack I found on Pinterest. here is the link: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/684195368370199015/
> 
> I want to wrap up this fanfic so bad, but the school holiday is here, my kids are all home so writing is about to become next to impossible. Oh boy, I hope this chapter is good enough for now.


	15. This Space Between Us

While Tyrion has chosen to slip back into the shadows - his parting words still blistering, Daenerys decides to stay put, to keep watching the father of her child trying to compose himself. It is remarkable to see the myriad of emotions flickering on his features.

At one point, he looks petrified even. Possibly trying to track the origin of the feelings he bears for the other and floored with astonishment by how far back it is rooted?

She doesn’t need to know such details.

He loves Sansa.

That alone is enough to drive her insane.

She has made her peace with this side of the sea never approving her. The Northerners have chosen to forget it is her presence that promised victory during the Battle of Long Night. The South bears grudge in her way of reclaiming what is hers. She has lost not one but two of her children in winning it back. But all of those could be pushed aside as she does feel an unquestionable victory when Jon chooses to be with her through it all. When he chooses not to claim what is clearly his birthright, choosing instead to stand by her side, she feels an overwhelming sense of relief that despite everyone she has lost, she has gained someone who is truly a family. She tells herself repeatedly that she is not utterly alone due to Jon’s presence. But after what has transpired tonight, she finds herself forced to make peace with another reality; Jon will never be able to offer her his utmost devotion.

That despite not claiming the throne, Jon has offered her a far greater form of betrayal. 

In all honesty, she doesn’t have it in her to be furious anymore. She has long suspected it, but she still hopes that the two of them could surpass whatever bond Jon shares with her.

But not after tonight…

She could feel her child stirring within her, reminding her that even when the realms turn their backs on her, she would still have one person who would love her unconditionally. Such thought soothes her. Sealing her decision to address the situation in hands. To stop pretending that Jon could, would ever offer her more.

It surely feels as if she is back in Winterfell.

A stranger amongst her own subjects.

“Do you even know what you are to one another?” Her voice booming, making her presence known, forgoing the needs to play charade as if she is not present during the whole exchanges between Jon and _her._

But Jon doesn’t know that and her voice whips him back to the present. He tries to calm himself, smoothing the creases so apparent on his face and putting on the mask he always has on in her vicinity.

As if it is enough to fool her.

“Do you?” She repeats herself, her voice strained.

“With whom My Queen?” He said slowly, stepping closer to her. He has the suspicion that she might have been there for quite some time. She appears collected and not out of breaths which should be apparent if she has just arrived.

She hears them.

He wonders how much, while Daenerys tries to recall the last time, he has called her by name.

“Sansa Stark!” She supplies the answer he has the audacity not to confess he has known all along. Her emotions, all proper and collected despite somber just a moment before now have managed to spill all over her like an angry volcano spitting lava.

Just with one name. 

“What is it about her? Why her?!” A sharp pain across her belly startled her just for a split second but she buries it as quickly; this is no time to show him any sign of weakness.

This is the time to remind him that he is in the presence of Mother of Dragons.

“She is my… “Jon stumbles his words as he tries to gather his thoughts. The realization is raw and too recent to be said out loud to others.

“Please, Aegon. Do not insult me by saying that she is just your sister.” Her eyes filled with fire and her words are only meant to demean. She takes a few steps closer, her gaze sharp and meant to kill while her hand hovers over his chest, wondering if she could feel his heart calling for his true love.

That wondering stops her short as she pulls away from landing her hand firmly against his chest.

She fears what she imagines she could feel, yet such does not stop her from spitting hurtful things.

“Only Targaryens are known to look at their sisters the way you did.”

His jaw clenches and anger colors his face yet still, still, he holds back, he wouldn’t show her the fire he has within him. Only for the other, none for her.

Slowly circling him, wanting to see him chokes with her reminders of his lineage because she knows best how much he struggles with it. She sees how he treasures the black cloak he always has with him despite the heat, it is always close to him. Aware of how quickly his fingers comb through his hair whenever she pulls them into braids.

A wolf he is, trapped in a corner, howling in pain, scratching his paws against the dragon’s scale emerging, finding roots on his skin, replacing his furs.

Such poorly hidden denial from him irks her to the core, pushing her to emphasize it even more. 

“You are indeed a Targaryen through and through, aren’t you?” her voice mocking him. 

“Even when your heart pines to be a Stark. Pines for a Stark.” Jon refuses to return her gaze but once he does, why is she still so shock by the emptiness echoing in it?

Something snaps within her.

_How could I be the only one in pain here? _

“I give everything for your quest against the undead! Everything!”

Jon keeps his silence, not falling into her invitations to join her in the second screaming match of the night.

It infuriates her even more.

“I could have marched against Cersei first. I could have kept Viserys, Rhaegal, Missandei alive!” Her womb hardens yet again and this time she couldn’t hide the pain. Her hands cradle her belly while she crouches. The pain is blinding, and she couldn’t hide it any longer. She grimaces, biting her own lips as her knees buckle under the onslaught of pain.

Her body caves under the pain, her heart even more so.

Noticing this, Jon immediately pulls her into his embrace, his hand rubbing her belly gently, shushing the pain away.

The wrong pain away. 

“Yet you couldn’t give your everything to me…” her voice breaks. She feels pathetic. Her quest she has fulfilled and yet she is envious of a woman with nothing.

“Tell me now, truthfully,” She bites her lower lip, trying to speak through the pain,

“Did you bend your knees because you love me or only to save the North?”

Another voice reiterates the same question back to him from his memory.

_Did you bend your knees to save the North, or because you love her?_

The same question utters by different voice and it catches him by a surprise, the same amount of disappointment reflected in a very different set of eyes.

He feels cornered, forced to respond to the question he has always managed to postpone from answering.

It must be at least a combination of both, isn’t it? What is the honour of using someone for what they could offer? He has prided himself for so long as someone who aspires to be as honorable as Eddard Stark, someone who is above such manipulation so common in political games he has sworn he would never partake. But seeing now how his feelings towards Sansa is so severe, he wonders if it has always acted as leverage towards all the decisions he has made in the name of the greater good? 

That he, without knowing, has managed to manipulate the Dragon Queen herself? And it was guilt that made him watch Sansa bears the brunt of his own scheming?

He feels repulsed by himself and in a conflicting moment, he questions how much of him has died before being resurrected.

Jon pulls his Queen even tighter inside his embrace.

He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t want to know anymore. He turns to look at the woman carrying her child, wanting to appease this madness taking hold firmer within her, within him.

He kisses her, wanting to erase everything he has just uncovered. Pulling her closer just to forget. His lips adamant against hers and she finally returns it weakly, taking the leftovers unbefitting for a queen.

It is Sansa’s warning that he hears loud in his mind.

_But you, you have to live with this. You have to live with her._

Jon has never wonder how it feels to be pin down by a dragon, bones crackled by the grip of its claw.

He knows now.

_\----------_

She is lost and she couldn’t find her way back.

Not to the feast.

Not back to her chamber.

She is thankful somehow because she is not sure where exactly she needs to be to calm the storm within her. She keeps on walking, dragging one foot in front of the other, searching for an escape when she knows it is not possible, not when all the chaos resides in her.

Her head throbs as much as her heartaches. To be reminded by Jon’s treachery. Betrayal hurts more than fire; that much she knows now but to live after it demands a lot from one’s being – it is a different kind of torture. To see how further along they are in their relationship, _a child!_ when she and Tyrion seem to be tiptoeing - none too sure what is the pace to be followed, not when marriage is not new to them yet dire circumstances separate them, allowing too many variables to surface, dictating the pace of the relationship.

And she is terrified to move forward. As much as she wants a family of her own, as much as how good the kisses are between them, there are unspoken things, horrifying things done to her that she feels she could never be freed from.

No matter how patient Tyrion is with her.

And now this?

Just seeing Jon makes her blood boils.

She must learn to control, to live with this unspeakable anger and the remnants of whatever feelings she bears for him. This invitation is just the beginning of many – she is very certain of it.

Her hands twitching, guilt and disgust washing over her of the thoughts she has allowed herself to have no matter how fleeting it is.

Her hair is unraveling, bouncing with the movements as she tries her utmost to ignore the dark that comes with the night. Too lost she is chasing her own thoughts that she does not realize that she has climbed her way up to the parapet of the castle, looming over the maze on the ground she couldn’t see clearly in the dark.

The cold, the darkness and the silence easing into her, luring her to fall readily into the pretense of being somewhere close to her heart. It calms her erratic heartbeats and she takes comfort in the illusion of home. The stillness soothes her, and she grabs a firm hold on it, swearing her fealty until she could sort the tangled mess within her.

She props her elbows against the cold stones, shaking her head to fully free her long tresses before she stares at the dark sky, illuminates by stars, recalling her days in King’s Landing where her gaze always find ways to look down from her cage, combing through the street, hoping that one fine day she could see the banner of her house marching to save her – a damsel in great distress. Time passes by and she no longer searches for help that would never come yet she never reminds herself to look up, not when she learns dragons have infested the tranquillity of the blue. Tonight, the sky demands from her a thorough form of appreciation, and she finally offers enough of it.

But instead of searching for an anchor within her, one that would hold her true despite everything sent crashing against her, she ponders about the pettiness of the situation at her hands and how she has fought so much for something far greater for her to be reduced back into something so trivial yet so overpowering.

Feelings.

Emotions.

A fight so innate to a woman she wonders if she is never meant for more.

\----------

Hours pass before Tyrion finds her, staring wistfully at the sky birthing new dawn. He feels immediate relief, yet it is polluted by a sense of bitterness he could not free himself from. He sighs heavily, a small part of him wants to turn back now that he knows she is safe, but his feet drag him across the distance and now he finds himself standing next to her. 

Sansa acknowledges his presence with a soft smile, softer than the pale shade of pink on the sky that for a moment he doubts it is there for him. She has reasons to be aloof, to be mad at him of the harsh tones he has used before they parted. But she smiles, and he could not help but feels hope blooming back for the two of them.

That perhaps when it comes to them, they could always restart, somewhere.

But for him, to rekindle, to restart means to understand, and to understand he needs all the details.

He needs to feed his hunger for her secrets.

Of _him_, specifically. 

“You love him.” A statement is thrown out in the open, an invitation for her to indulge him with explanations.

She exhales languidly, her exhaustion apparent. “Is it that obvious?” she asks him, curious with what he knows of it for him to deliver such fact with such conviction yet too tired to dig further. She wants at least for them to pick up where they have left off from the night before – it isn’t necessary for her to know what fuel his assertion.

Tyrion purses his lips before he continues, “No. But I am getting fluent in reading you.”

Sansa breathes in, her eyes squinting from the glare of the sun before she kneels, hiding from it, buying her time to carefully explains to him the conclusion she has come upon after hours of standing alone braving the cold, dissecting all thoughts that lead her here, at this moment. 

“I don’t love him any longer.”

All the rage she harbors for Jon and his frustration towards her has best been summarized by Jon himself.

_We could never move past this…._

And such should have been enough to mark an end. Sansa feels a small triumph as she realizes how senseless she has been to worry about something that has never begun in the first place yet she is glad it has ended for good. whatever it is between Jon and her has gone stale and nothing could be revived from it. 

It is dead. 

Tyrion sits in front of her. He needs to not be blind by his feelings towards her as they try to address the situation. He listens as she speaks more of it, her voice saturated with relief, 

“What’s left is the echo of the past. And it is not much, to begin with. He loves her. Always have been.”

“I see.” A short reply from him. It offers him a subtle joy that Sansa has been blinded by her disappointment in Jon, so much that she has failed to read what is blatantly obvious to him and Daenerys. Yet a naïve part of him, a selfish part of him wants her to deny it immediately, to say that he is the only one ever that she has ever seen worthy for her love. But such a dream is never meant for him. There will always someone claiming what he desires first. There will always be someone tainting what he loves the most. There will always be someone better than him. He knows such thoughts are appalling but it is there, buried deep, rooted even deeper and he acknowledges it. How can he not when it is so familiar it is part of him?

He has protected her in ways he knows how. He knows it is never enough to mark her as his because he never sees her that way before - he genuinely cares for her with no ulterior motive, but to know now that someone has managed to win her heart when she has long refused to offer it to anyone offers him a taste so bitter, being forced to be reminded that he is no one's first choice. 

Ever.

He is mad at her but that is pale compared to the rage he keeps for himself, for thinking that she is using him.

_Sansa will never do that to me... _

“You are hurt.” Her voice halts his rapid train of thoughts. 

“I try not to. “He forces a smile but to no avail – she sees right through it.

“I want to know….” He must. He feels it is the least she could offer for him to get through this looming barrier, growing higher by the seconds. 

She stops leaning closer to him, questioning his request. She has contemplated such an option, to bare all to Tyrion but it gags her and from the core of her being she could feel it would not be freeing to both.

“No.”

Tyrion’s gaze is filled with pain that she will have to placate with explanations.

“No.” her voice softer yet firm still for him to know this is not something he could challenge. “I will not be coerced into telling you things that could jeopardize our relationship.” Nothing good will come out if she plows through with the when and why and how about someone, she is more than willing to leave in the past especially with someone she wants to build a future with.

To her it is unnecessary.

To him, it gives more room for doubts.

“Jeopardized our relationship?” he repeats after her, his voice incredulous. 

“But wouldn’t telling each other the whole truth promises a stronger foundation towards whatever we are building together?” It is as if his heart and his mind, his feelings and his logical reasoning brewing a storm so dense within him he could no longer control the things coming out from his mouth.

He wants them to move forward, yet he clings so much at her past, at the unknown, that he knows he has and will never earn the rights to question.

And still, he insists.

Sansa could feel her head pounding from the lack of sleep and Tyrion’s persistence, but she prays for the strength to not ruin what she believes is meant to be something so beautiful.

She must be patient, burying her own frustrations at his inability to simply accept what she is offering because Tyrion has every right to feel what he feels now. Just because she believes it is not something he should worry about doesn’t make it appropriate for her to refute his reactions. She takes her time to carefully construct her answer. Their ability to move forward hinges on it. Her hands seek warmth from his hands, and she is glad he does not deny the gesture.

“I understand that much. The truth would have saved my mother the pain tricked into thinking that my father had once found comfort from another woman. The truth would have certainly made my mother kinder to him. Of all the things that have befallen unto my family… I think that is the greatest tragedy…. she dies not knowing.” She understands where Tyrion is coming from, but she is firm in her stance; the past should be left there where they belong.

“But this? I would not give you a reason to question what I feel for you. I will not give you a place of misery you revisit each time you doubt our love. For us to have the same fights over and over until we die. I won’t provide the poison that would kill us.”

“So you love him then.” His voice subdued in its own melancholy, defeated.

“No.” She holds on to his hands harder. But it is as if he is in a trance, trap in his own mind.

And Sansa has lost the very key that could have freed him from it.

“Enough for it to make a difference.”

“No Tyrion....” She is pleading for him to look at her for perhaps her eyes could express clearly what her words have failed. But he keeps his gaze on their locked hands.

“Enough for it to poison us.”

_\-----------_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers. I am still here, fret not. My take on this chapter is, love is difficult and regardless of how old you are and despite having an idea on what not should be done, you just can't help it. Fights are inevitable, it happens. 
> 
> Thank you for still reading. A few more days and we will enter a new year! oh boy, I wonder when can I conclude this story.


	16. Grow as We Go

She lets him be for a while. Stewing in his own assumptions that she knows are wrong but still, she leaves him alone, knowing that he is not at the place where he wants to be reasoned with just yet. 

They return home, they continue their routine together and allow silence to fill the void between them.

Reverberating, restless silence filling their chamber, creeping like strong roots claiming the space between them as theirs.

At one point, her bleeding exasperation at his stubbornness almost drives her to move back to her own chamber, her hands already slowly picking up her belongings. Tyrion seems adamant to give room for Jon’s memories to haunt them while Sansa insists to ignore the presence of such memories completely. She does not want Tyrion to know more than he has gathered on his own but apparently the thoughts he has gathered on his own are more than enough to push them far away.

She thinks she is in the right.

He thinks he has the right to more.

Yet when her arms are full of her things, he rises from his seat, closing the door and barring it before he pries her books and threads and needles from her hands and placing it back where they belong in their chamber.

That is when she knows to wait a little longer. He is trying to make peace with his own discovery and with her not good enough answers. He needs time.

That is aplenty and available to be given freely.

So she waits.

For him to come back to her.

\----------

They both sit quietly in their solar, facing one another with a desk between them and books stacked upon it. His books are stacked in a way to hinder himself from having a clear view of her and Sansa could not stop herself from marveling at the absurdity of the setting. The length he would go to deny himself what she is offering gladly. To cling petulantly to a chapter of her life she has left behind in the Northern cold and amongst the ashes in King’s Landing.

She places the book she is reading on his stack and pull closer to her the inkwell and a parchment. If he wants to be childish, she could too. If he doesn’t want to speak, she will write.

The silence between them has allowed Sansa to argue with herself of million ways to convince Tyrion and also herself that he needs not to know her secrets for them to move forward. Some arguments are purely fuel by untamed emotions, few are quite lengthy and not quite clear, losing its intended meaning along the way, while another needs to be honed better if she wants to keep her calm while steering this relationship to much pleasant water.

The ink drips onto the parchment, blotching the surface as she dwells further into finding the perfect argument, dismissing each that dares to come forefront. In the end, she dips back her quill into the inkwell and stares at Tyrion, trying to savor the feelings she bears for him, to guide her in reaching through him.

Sansa inhales the air between them, tasting clarity before she begins.

She decides to let her heart speaks.

For a stretch of time, only the scratches of her quill could be heard in the chamber. Tyrion is intrigued but he keeps his head down, pretending to be engrossed with his reading. Once done, she waits for the ink to dry before she pushes the parchment towards him, knocking the wooden desk thrice to get his attention.

He steals a glimpse at the face he has indeed miss but obscured by the mixed feelings within him while pulling the offering closer, shifting his gaze to focus on the words written neatly, noticing the over flourishing tails of the ‘y’s and the perfect curves of the ‘s’s.

Perfect penmanship expected from a lady.

Clearing his throat to return his focus, he begins to read, while Sansa pretends to embroider a handkerchief.

_“People carry this silly notion, a sense of entitlement perhaps, that if you love someone, you should offer the entirety of your heart to that person. _

_But you only have one. After all my experiences, I begin to think that, your heart should be kept for yourself. _

_What you could do is to allow portions to be named for the person you love. _

_There is a portion of my heart marked as yours. You are my husband. You are better than a husband. You are a friend, a companion of mine when I thought I couldn’t find it in me to trust anyone in this entire world. _

_Why are you so set in having this chasm between us?”_

That chasm has a name and it irritates him that she wants to move forward while pretending the past does not matter. But a month has passed between then and now and Sansa has been kind enough to not force him to swallow whole her brief explanation and now, she even tries her best to begin again.

_Do I dare to think she is trying to win me back? _

He scoffs at his own intruding thought.

_To win me would suggest I am a prize, which I am clearly not…._

He exhales loudly, her interest piqued, and as quickly he hides behind the parchment, reading everything for the second time, trying to have a different and if gods willing, a much forgiving perspective.

He combs through the content again, treasuring the honesty behind each word. She has not in any way invalidates his own reaction. She accepts it, all while keeping her stance on the subject matter which he applauds – she has grown so much from the Sansa he knows back then, and he could not stop himself from feeling proud of her. He understands why she believes what she believes; after going through such harrowing experience how could she not settle to such a way of thinking-that giving all to another will only torture herself in the end when she knows better to be self-preserving. He shudders in trying to pinpoint at what point she loses hope in waiting for others to save her. Does it start in King’s Landing and later cemented firmly in her own home? The one she has always long for?

The irony is disturbing. For her to completely loses hope in the one place she has always associated with safety and comfort. It certainly is heartbreaking.

As time passes, a stronger insight into her stance grows resolutely. He no longer feels angry knowing that he could never have her whole heart – no one could, not him, no one. Her explanation is clear and not forceful and kind while at it. He folds the parchment, wanting to have that as a fond reminder whenever he has doubts, tucking it safely in his favorite book before keeping it in the desk’s drawer. 

“We could talk.” Her own fingers intertwined and placed on the desk, opening himself to what he hopes is a much civil conversation as compared to the most recent one.

Sansa almost failed to hide her scoff.

“Could we?” As much as she appears annoyed, she is afraid to lose him.

Tyrion contains his amusement at her reaction. He tells himself that he could be pleased with just a portion – that is enough, he takes what he could, and he would make sure that he would be content with it. Sansa marks him as her husband, friend, and companion. That makes him answerable to at the very least three portions of her heart, that it would be selfish of him to ask for more. He is ready to leave this argument behind until a devilish thought appears and reminds him that while he has what he believes as more than a portion, Jon still has his name carved perhaps next to his.

And such thought sours his heart yet again.

Sansa is about to speak and from the brightness of her eyes and the swell of her cheeks he could tell it would be something good for the two of them.

Which is why he wants to slap himself when he hears the words gliding from his own lips,

“A part of you will always love him…”

The drop of her shoulder is so apparent, and her crestfallen look slashes a bigger wound in his own heart than hers.

Yet he continues hacking off any hope to repair what is left between them.

“And you would never love me the way you love him.”

As if he could not stop himself from further impairing the bond between them. As if he is trying to fix a hole in a sinking ship by carving it bigger. He wants to eat his words back, but it is too late as she sinks further in her seat, mystified by the sudden change in the direction she initially thinks the two of them are heading for.

Tyrion watches her frustration builds up, coursing through her very being before she lets it out in a harsh exhale. Her head shaking before she brings her hands to cover her face.

It is too much coming from him.

She surrenders.

She cries.

She is at loss in how to fix this.

She doesn’t want Jon yet the one she wants keeps reminding her of the person she wants to forget relentlessly.

_Why is this so hard? What….? How….? _

A familiar silence drapes the distance between them, distinguishing the sparks to a new beginning before it could turn to a full flare.

Tyrion feels shackled to his seat, his knuckles white from gripping the armrest, half-expecting she would shake him free from every single thought that has anything to do with Jon. If she is mad, he would have understood – he has pushed her to the edge.

She collects herself from the breakdown, failing to wipe all her tears, her cheeks red and her lips quiver as Tyrion steels himself to receive her wrath.

But instead, there is an only overwhelming disappointment.

“Why?” her voice brittle. Not angry. Not even a hint of it.

Tyrion wouldn’t even try to answer. He is not wrong but clearly his approach to the subject has been hostile.

“Why do you want me to love you the way I love him?” She stands up, her chest heavy, but still, she does not lose her composure. She watches him and it hurts her that after all the time they have spent together, Tyrion would doubt her still.

“I love you. “She breathes out the three magical words, hoping it would find its way to nestle permanently in his heart when his mind clearly refuses to acknowledge it.

“I love you in ways meant only for you.”

Yet she flees from him, leaving him to suffer in the despair of his own making. It hits him hard; the simple string of words paired with the pain he has inflicted upon her, and once again, he finds himself questioning his own stubbornness.

Perhaps Sansa is right.

The only one stopping him from his own happiness is himself.

Not her.

Not Jon.

Him.

\----------

Tyrion readies himself for the night, feeling dreadful, wondering if he has ended it for good. He has spent the day mulling over her written and spoken words, pondering over what drives him to say things he knows will further damned the fragile bond between them.

_What’s wrong with me? _

“Oh, do I really need that question answered?” He asks himself out loud.

He massages his temple as he stares at the blank canopy of the sheet over his head, thinking of why he is so hung up with the fact that Sansa has loved another before him.

It’s petty.

It’s childish.

It’s odd that he, who has lived for four decades could be reduced to a blubbering youth that could not be reasoned with, a striking contrast of someone whom at one point of his life has been appointed as Hand, one time by his own father that hates his very existence.

Sansa is not wrong in wanting to keep the past from him.

He should have known to respect her decision. She is only trying to protect him and protect her own heart from breaking yet again. He realizes the issue here is much bigger and stems from his own upbringing and how he, despite believing he has overcome it, is still deeply affected by the mere nuance that he could never be good enough, that people only tolerate his presence because of his family name – something he has been told repeatedly even to this day and now he is directing his latent anger to the wrong person. 

His father’s voice is loud, banging against his skull, heavy with excruciatingly painful snickers.

_You, who killed your mother to come into the world? _

_You are an ill-made, spiteful little creature full of envy, lust, and low cunning. _

“Well, maybe I am all of that, but she loves me!” he bellows to no one in particular, angry with words uttered by the dead.

Sansa has told him more than one occasion that he is more than just an imp. Sansa has been kind and she has loved him, in her own ways.

That on its own is more than anyone has ever offered him in his whole life.

He must believe it is enough and perhaps, perhaps if he is kind and deserving, it will grow eventually.

He tosses under the weight of the blanket, guilt, and shame over the way he has been behaving towards her. He shuts his eyes forcefully, cursing his own harsh words and how he has managed to misdirect all of it to the one person who sincerely loves him.

No matter how little. 

“Fuck!” he growls at the empty chamber. He pulls the blanket covering himself before turning to his side, punching his pillows repeatedly. He knows Sansa is back in her chamber; a maid is sent to his to retrieve all her belongings. He wonders if she has eaten, knowing full well she could never stomach any food when she is upset.

Things could have been different if only he could be the bigger man but instead, he wallows too long in his own private pain, punishing Sansa for sins she has never committed, prying for secrets she has every right to keep as her own.

Tyrion is lying on his side, contemplating the appropriate ways to fix what he has stubbornly further broken when the creak of the door alarmed him. He is quick to be annoyed at the interruption, preparing a scathing response when he catches a whiff of rose’s scent – Sansa’s favorite scented oil after bath. His words die in his throat as he now turns frozen, not moving an inch, doubtful of her presence in his chamber – a surprise, one he does not even dare to imagine; not after what has transpired earlier. He could feel the mattress dip, the blanket rustles as she buries herself next to him.

His own heartbeats are deafening, pounding madly against his chest as he listens carefully at her words.

\-----------

Sansa has spent hours or at least as much time needed for one candle to be thoroughly used on her bed, sleeping.

She is livid at Tyrion but that feeling quickly fades to defeat when he reiterates the same rhetoric he has offered before back in High Garden.

As long as Tyrion chooses not to believe her words, there is not much could be done to convince him. We believe what we want to believe. She props herself up, noticing the darkness from outside as she realizes that she has slept not at the length of a candle but almost the entire day.

_Very unbecoming of a lady._

Her Septa would have been appalled for weeks.

That small fact cheers her for a while. It reminds her of Arya and how she has always managed to completely disregard lectures after lectures on what is deemed as appropriate for a lady.

“Arya never lives to seek approval from others. That is why she thrives on her own.” She speaks, filling the silence with her own voice.

Her feet bare against the floor as she saunters across her chamber, her mind is filled with stray thoughts, fluttering their wings around her yet she captures none, letting them have their ways in her mind.

“While I thrive to prove I am more than just a girl with the simple dream of becoming Queen.”

Her fingers deftly remove the gown she is wearing – the Southern heat is unbearable this time of the year and with Tyrion acting the way he is now; it gives her more reason to despise the place meant to be her prison.

Her steps are paused as it dawns on her, how quickly her mind returns to him…

She wonders what Tyrion thrives for as she makes her way towards the door, wishing there would be a maidservant ready for she wishes to soak to fight the heat.

\----------

The fascinating thing about thoughts is, they linger before they find connections with old memories, before they birth new ideas or at its simplicity, an explanation one might have overlooked beforehand. Or, in certain instances, they gather at the back of one’s mind before sprinting forward demanding to be interpreted.

Sansa relishes in the small waves created each time she moves her body in the tub. Her mind constantly revisiting memories of Tyrion speaking of his childhood – she does not know why her mind is adamant in supplying her with such memories. But she plays along, perhaps there is an answer there somewhere.

The story of how Lord Tywin always mocks him resurfaces…

The bits about how he is always shadowed by Cersei and Jaime…

One after another depicting his own brand of sufferings.

She rinses herself clean, drying herself before she puts on a clean night shift and proceeds with brushing her hair free of knots, thinking of only him. As she moves to apply her favorite scented oil against her scalp, she reflects on the things she has written for him, wondering if she has offered enough.

The conclusion comes much later when she is at the edge of giving up in connecting the dots, when she is about to sail to oblivion. An answer so clear that unlocks every door between them, forcing her to sit upright, her hands curling into fists, hanging mid-air as if she has successfully captured the winged being that carries with it an answer she has unconsciously sought after.

“Tyrion thrives to be someone’s first choice.”

“And not giving all only feed his greatest fear.”

_Of being obsolete. _

_Cast aside. _

Sansa swallows the enlightenment whole before she runs to him.

\----------

“You can have it all Tyrion….” She scoots closer to him, noticing how his body stiffens with her presence.

“Every portion of my heart,” her fingers trace his back, rubbing circle against the strained muscle, softly, gently until she could feel him stop withholding his breath. 

She knows what she has to say now. She must convince him that he is thoroughly loved, that he is someone she chooses to be with, not someone she settles with.

The space between them now is absent and she seals it with tender kisses on his back and his neck.

“What is a candle compared to the sun…?” She whispers closer, letting him feels the warmth of her breath against his skin, waiting for him to turn and face her.

“What is a drop of rain compared to the sea…?” she continues courting her husband with words, even when she is unsure of its worth, but she has to try to win him, or at least, she wishes for him to know that he is wanted.

At that exact moment, Tyrion would kill to see himself from her eyes. How she keeps describing him as this treasured being he couldn’t relate with, as if people would cut off their own limbs to be with him when he has been living in a world where people are more than ready to cut _him_ into pieces. 

And her truth, her offering him her whole heart - not just a portion, feels like the accumulation of all the good things he could never experience and even more so. Her truth carries with it a glowing warmth he imagines a child would feel being enveloped by his mother’s embrace. Or perhaps a nod of approval by a father over the child’s little achievements. It offers him validation that is offered too scarcely yet taken too many times from his grip.

It should scare him of how much power she holds over him now and how much he craves for it, yet it feels only wonderful.

Glorious even.

Making him a little greedy for more.

“What else…?”

He finally turns towards her.

A smile slowly creeps upon her lips before it is mirrored sheepishly by his.

Sansa tells herself she will be generous, that she will not withhold anything from him anymore.

“What is Southern winter compared to the Northern cold?”

Tyrion reaches out for her hand that has been busy caressing the side of his face, kissing it fondly. “Speaking as someone who actually at one point of his life had stood on top of the Wall, I would say that is a very, very strong comparison.”

Satisfied with his reply, Sansa steals a kiss. A quick peck on his lips, almost innocent but enough to catch Tyrion off-guard. His expression purchases a string of giggles from Sansa.

.“What were you doing on top of the Wall?” She asks between giggles.

“I would rather not say.” It is as if they have never left Casterly Rock. Tyrion moves to sit properly, and Sansa goes along with him, facing him. He pulls her hands in his, kissing them again and again, half of him couldn’t fully comprehend how this reunion could taste so much sweeter than the first but he knows he has ample time to fill in his thirst for explanations, or perhaps for once he could be without it. At this moment, the world could burn, and he would have just turned away basking in the glory of being offered her whole heart.

He doubts he was this happy when he was appointed as Hand. Everything he has experienced beforehand is pale compared to this euphoria reigning his whole being.

_Sansa truly loves me._

That is all he allows himself to remember. He couldn’t stop touching her hands, her elbows, her hair as if he couldn’t believe that for once he could have it all.

Sansa’s smile matches the warmth coursing through his veins, and he swears his chest is about to explode.

“I love you, Sansa. Do you know that?”

Her eyes water at his confession, “And I love you Tyrion. Do you know that?”

For the second time of the night, she leans closer, kissing her husband, but this kiss puts the first one to shame. She has concerns when it comes to physical intimacy, but tonight, such fear vanishes. Never she would have imagined herself being so comfortable being so close to a man but with him, tonight, it feels almost natural.

As if it is always meant to be.

_\-------------_

_“Yesterday, that was very unladylike of me, wasn’t it?”_

_“I approve that unladylike behavior. Very much.”_

_“But Tyrion…I was depraved.” _

_“So you seduced your ever willing husband. That is not a crime.”_

_“Hmmm….”_

_“Do you…like it?”_

_“Am I supposed to enjoy it that much though?”_

_“I sure hope so.” _

_“But it was…. I mean, I was…. Oh, Tyrion, I am just being silly, aren’t I?”_

_“Yes. But I find it very endearing.”_

_\---------------_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.....? 
> 
> Erghhh, I sure hope it is good enough. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> And please, do leave comments. I love reading them.


	17. Our Dreams

The sound of a mother wailing pierces through the soft veil of mist blanketing the whole castle, too soon for anyone other than the servants to start running errands for the day. Cradling a bundled-up blanket close to her heavy with milk breasts, painfully pulsing for the little pair of lips to latch on as she coos at nothing, sniffing the cloth, hoping to be blessed with the innocent scent young life would carry.

But it is gone. A month is too long for the scent to linger, especially when it is inhaled greedily to remind herself of such perfection – an extension of her own grandiosity, a life she would have never imagined to be able to carry.

The father of the child stays unmoving on the bed; such loss has shackled him with grief the mother is so set he is not experiencing as latent as herself. As if mothers are the only being that can love a child with such intensity…

He too has suffered in his own ways.

He has lost his child.

And it seems, any moment now, he would lose his wife too.

The child was born healthy, which makes the loss much harder to swallow. A strong babe simply stops breathing in his sleep, pale and too still when found the following sunrise. He exhales slowly, controlling his breaths as he falls into the curse of revisiting the memory of watching the child placed on a funeral pyre. He was set to entomb the little one, but _she_, she would rather see the little one consumed by fire. As if testing whether the small one could be reborn the way she has been reborn with each hungry laps of a blazing inferno. She has been strong enough to contend his decision yet as the fire is reflected in her eyes, she too is burnt to ashes the same way her child did.

The nights have never been the same since.

Or perhaps it has been the same since now that he is forced to bear witness as his deranged wife shrinks herself deeper into the dark void within her – one that he could not reach no matter how hard he tries.

He is forced to push aside his own pain as he takes her place, assuming the responsibilities of making sure the realms do not fall into madness the way their Queen is. Forced to learn quickly of things he has told himself he has no intention nor the capability to be good in – politics.

It is consuming and thoroughly demanding but it shifts his pain somewhere; what is dead will remain dead nowadays, no longer will they wake up one way or another.

He understands that much.

He hopes she would too, one day.

For now, he lets her grieves.

Her voice has remained exclusive for the lost soul yet tonight there is a certain clarity in her eyes from the way her wrath seems very much alive through her damning violet eyes.

“It’s her…”

“She did this to us…”

“Who? Sansa?” he says meekly, knowing full well he too has been there, always, always blaming the red-headed beauty for things he is such a coward to admit.

“Yes. Yes. You thought so too didn’t you?”

He shakes his head. He has never blamed her for this.

“She kills our child!” she yells, her hands covered by the blanket extended towards him as if one could trace the blood back towards someone who is currently a vast sea away. “She curses our Aemon!” He looks at her, truly, pain and pity mixed so well one simply couldn’t tell which is overpowering the other. Her lips, her complexion is all as pale as her hair, only the violet of her eyes contrasting the pale almost rivaling his old last name.

_How can fire be so pale? _

She persists in her mutterings, forcing onto him her unchallenged belief that the loss has been caused by her enemy.

“You weren’t there when she said those filthy words!” her feet drag her closer towards the arch window and he quickly fit himself in between, afraid that she would do the unthinkable. She veers away from him; perhaps understanding the reason he plants himself there, or perhaps annoyed that he turns himself into an obstacle between her and her loved ones she could have sworn waiting for her out there. The piece of cloth is caressed against her cheek, her lips continuing to spill her barely buried suspicions.

“She plays her part well, so innocent, docile, and victimized by the Mad Queen but her words……” she turns abruptly at him, spitting as if she is about to reveal the darkest secret about the red wolf. “Her words…. Aegon…. her words come straight from the pits of hell where she dugs her heart from….”

“Oozing with pus and the stench of blood from her sins….”

“Dany….” His tone brimming with thick layer of apprehension; his fingers are quick to massage the bridge of his nose as she continues to speak to herself.

“I should have burned her when I got the chance…” she grits her teeth and her jaw clench with determination.

“I would burn her now…who can stop me? I will ride Drogon and burn her, burn that imp too. She has committed treason, didn’t she?” her voice rises, shrill with each word and he could no longer bear to see this.

“Hush Dany…...” his hands on her shoulder, carefully guiding her away from the reach of the breeze. He pushes her gently to sit on the settee and he kneels in front of her, coaxing her to find the courage to resurface from the undeniable strong pull of grief.

“Aemon is not coming back to us,” a fact, when said out loud still fails to cut off her cling to the lies she tells herself.

Her lips quiver, her eyes wild, her breaths shallow as she retreats to the void, exhaustion overwhelms her, her energy all spent mourning her loss. Her body limps in his cradle, her hands gripping the blanket of the dead; she has carried him far longer within her than her own arms. Not long enough to create memories nor dry the milk in her breasts, spilling yet never running dry while her eyes have run out of tears after the first week.

Her lips call out for him, “My boy….”

“We lost him.” He runs his fingers softly against her long tresses, softly massaging her scalp as if such a gesture could soften the blow of losing yet another child.

“Yer shekh ma shieraki anni….” Her whisper travels and she desperately hopes it travels beyond the living, to the place where Aemon is playing with Rhaego while Khal Drogo watching the two for her, and Viserion together with Rhaegal flying freely above her family.

\-------------

_Son was born healthy. Dies in his sleep three moons after._

Sansa sucks in a deep breath; the blow from the news still loiters even after hours of internalizing it. She has been ransacking their chamber, searching for the book she has last seen read by Tyrion just three days before. She has seen him too lost in his own reading, even more than the usual and it prompts her to read the book on her own, to see what could have possibly entranced her husband’s attention to such degree. She sifts through the notes he keeps neatly in his drawer when small torn bits of parchment catch her attention; a letter clearly not disposed of carefully. Placing the bits together, she reads it again and again just to be sure.

Her gaze fleets quickly towards the door, wondering if Tyrion would be back so soon from the council between other families on this side of the sea. The door stands slightly ajar yet there is no movement to it other than a gentle sway…

She stands frozen, her feet bolted to the floor.

The door moves again yet reveal nothing behind it.

_A gust of wind. _

She exhales her relief as she shoves the pieces back where they belong. Clearly, her husband wishes not for her to see. Perhaps this could have been what riddling him these past days and Sansa could feel a harsh tug at the corner of her heart.

“Did I do this to you?” 

Guilt sure is foreign when directed to the Mother of Dragons and her hands quickly darted to the slight rise of her own womb.

Ill wishes would find their way back to the one uttering it; Sansa has begun to regret what she has said spitefully at the Queen before they left for Casterly Rock.

\--------------

Tyrion watches his wife stitching something big and black unto a blanket, the lack of light has seen to him only guessing what motives it could be. She has been doing this diligently, working on this piece only at night before she goes to sleep. And she has been quite secretive too, only pulling it out when she is sure he has already asleep.

But he has caught her once or twice and she would quickly push the piece under the bed and turns to him with sweet honeyed kisses and the thought of the small blanket quickly dissipates into the heat they share underneath their blanket.

Sansa can stitch all she wants and why would it bother him if she keeps one of her projects a secret from him?

But from the angle he has been peering from, the big black thing sure looks like the Targaryen emblem.

_Hurmm, Sansa has once sworn he would never stitch dragons on anything. _

He continues watching her in silence when her fingers stop pulling the thread. Immediately, he closes his eyes, feigning sleep but still observing her as she places the blanket inside a basket and stoops low, hanging by the edge of the bed as she pushes her secret inside the dungeon of what truly is the underneath of their bed.

She sits upright, rubbing the weariness out of her eyes before she lies down, giving her back to him the same time she pulls a pillow to cover her face.

Now, the secret stitching project he could easily let go but he does notice this new habit of covering her face when asleep far longer before the stitching ritual begins.

It has gone on for two months now and secretly, although tries as he might not admit it, it truly bothers him for no reason.

“Did something change? Did I do something wrong?” his voice rumbles low as he tugs at the corner of her pillow.

A slight rustle, for she has just fallen asleep before she uncovers her face.

“What do you mean?” She looks at him, lips pouty as if sulking. She could not help herself from reaching out and lightly touch the curve, smiling on her own to see her husband so vulnerable all a sudden.

Tyrion looks down, eyeing the pillow as if the inanimate object is his most despised enemy now.

He feels childish. 

“You sleep with a pillow covering your face. You turn away…. from me.” his words drawl out slowly as if at such pace it wouldn’t sound as ridiculous as it is inside his mind.

Sansa sits up straight, puffing the pillow to be prop against her back as she mulls over a few things. She has not told Tyrion anything about the pregnancy because she is not too sure before; she does not want to give hope and when it is not what it is, to witness the happiness dim.

In all honesty, she is not too sure it could happen to her. That bastard devoured by his hounds had made sure she could not be ingesting any moon tea to stop pregnancy and yet it did not happen then. Not even a possibility of carrying one as her blood comes dutifully, her body blatantly defying his needs for an heir.

She wants to tell Tyrion at one point, but that plan was halted when she found out about Daenerys’s child.

She thinks, perhaps, if only she alone knows, for the time being, she could protect her child from evil eyes; from those who would have wished for bad things to happen to her and the little one.

And the rise of her womb is very minor, no one could have suspected it.

But as she looks at his hopeful eyes, _how could I keep this as a secret? It is his child too as much as it is mine._

Sansa pushes her hair back, tucking them behind her ears before she begins timidly.

“I cover my face because…. when I am particularly exhausted, I tend to snore.” It is the truth. She has realized that snoring comes with pregnancy when she has been abruptly woken up by her own snore during one of her naps when Tyrion is away. She is embarrassed by it, and that leads to her covering her face with the pillow.

Tyrion has always said things about how gracious she carries herself – a true, noble-born lady.

_Lady doesn’t snore. They should be the epitome of perfection. _

“I never heard it.” The look on his face suggests he does not fall for it.

“That because the pillow works. And you tend to sleep like the dead.”

That much is true. When he is asleep it takes a whole lot to wake him up. “Why are you so exhausted?” he is now worried that perhaps he does not have enough servants to manage the castle, that perhaps Sansa has been doing a lot more than she is ready to admit in running the place.

Sansa bits her lower lip, thinking how straightforward she should be in delivering the news.

“I am exhausted……” she looks at him, hanging on dearly to her words, “…...from carrying a child.”

There. It is out there in the open and she could have sworn she could feel her child fluttering inside her.

Moments pass between them as now it is Tyrion’s turn to ponder over things, she has just confided to him. His mouth opens, closing again before he speaks,

“Whose child have you been carrying around?” he tries to remember if one of the staff has delivered a child, but he has never been informed of any births nor he has seen any child or any woman in the castle heavily pregnant. “Honestly, I hardly see a child around here.”

_You are one smart, silly man…_

Sansa tries her best to stifle her laugh. The beautiful moment of revelation has passed poorly and clearly it must be spelled out to him. She nestles deeper against her pillow, hoping he could see the not so obvious bump. To drives her point home, she even places her hands above it, framing the evidence.

The look on his face is pure blank.

“Oh, you will see one soon enough. I think in six or seven moons. When a child comes out from my body then you’ll see.” Annoyed she is that Tyrion seems so unaware. But as the truth sinks in, she watches Tyrion’s mouth gaping and closing, his eyes blinking rapidly. He stutters unintelligibly, no clear words coming out from his lips.

“I’m beginning to doubt you are the smartest man I’ve known.” She places her palms against his coarse beard.

“The same way I doubt your sanity when you insist on sharing your bed with me. Look what happens now!” At that comment, she pinches his cheeks playfully, “What do you mean look what happens now?!”

His grin is too wide by now and, could a person visibly glow?

“I am going to be a father…” he croons, moving to put himself between her legs while his hands slowly caress the gentle swell of her belly. How could he not tell anything amiss? But Sansa does not have any of those morning sicknesses, and truthfully there is nothing that could lead him to suspect it, except that her appetite has grown - he tells himself it happens when someone is content, little does he knows she has more than one reasons to be gratified. He kisses her belly, “How far along are you?” directing his question to the still-developing child instead of the mother.

Sansa plays with his hair, ruffling his curls. She feels light, buoyant by the extreme happiness radiating from the beautiful scene in front of her. “You are happy, aren’t you?”

“How can I not? This is the one dream I never dare to hope for,” peppering her belly with more kisses. They remain in such a position for quite a while, both lost in savoring the given blessing.

“Tyrion?” she breaks the stillness.

“Yes love?” he looks up to her, his smile never leaving, perhaps ever.

“We would be fine, would we?” The tremor in her voice is evident but Tyrion is too drunk in happiness to notice. She could not be sure if the ‘we_’_ refers to him and her, or her and the child. She has always been skeptical when good things happen to her after all.

“Of course.” his answer is so full of confidence, for a moment she allows herself to indulge in it.

\-----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Last update of 2019. Looking forward to finishing all the stories I have started so far. 
> 
> Comments are much appreciated, Thank you, dear readers. You simply do not know how much each kudos and comments mean for me.


	18. A Blessing not Shared

One hand holding a spade while the other is cradling her heavy belly, Sansa realizes that perhaps she has been misinformed of the things women are capable of this far into the pregnancy.

She groans internally, eyeing the ground carefully, searching for spots she thinks would be soft enough before she lifts her spade to begin digging. She scoops once, twice - a shallow amount of dirt before she loses her breaths, the blade of the spade dips into the ground, one foot placed against its shoulder, breathing heavily as she slowly sags onto the ground with a soft thud.

“What on earth are you doing Sansa…?”

She does not need to turn to know his expression must have been livid but mostly concern would have been apparent on his face. She sighs; she wants to do this on her own, but it is without a question that she truly needs help.

He waits for her to answer - if he is more than what he is he would have simply carried her back to their chamber. He stands next to her, head dipping down, closer to her, his hands over her shoulder, squeezing it ever gently, “It’s the middle of the night,” he coaxes her back to bed. “You could have hurt yourself.”

“I need to dig a grave,” she says in a tone a petulant child would have used, insisting for a slice of cake before dinner.

“What for?” By now he has learned it is best to simply go with the flow, to accommodate without questioning when it comes to dealing with a pregnant woman. 

“An offering,” She states clearly. Tyrion crouches next to her, he too is eyeing the shallow grave underneath the weir wood tree wondering if he has somehow missed a certain someone’s name day or death’s day or perhaps a ritual meant for the old gods the Northerners would have been very familiar with. He thinks hard, trying to remember all about the old gods he has heard and read about.

Nothing calls for a pregnant woman to dig a hole in the middle of the night. His eyebrows scrunch tighter, staring at the barely dented ground.

It is then Sansa decides to fill in the blanks. Her hands reach out for the blanket she has made, adorned with the Targaryen’s emblem at the far corner of its length, blending with the colorful stitching of sunset. “I made this for her lost child.”

If he is surprised, he has done his best to mask it quickly. He remembers hiding the news, they have finally moved forward in their relationship and it is a clear choice for him, not to have any news from that side of the sea to dampen their budding relationship.

But of course, she would have known. Now he finally knows what she has been working on every night before she goes to sleep.

“What is his name?” she inquires. The little one had lived for three moons, obviously, he would have been named by his parents.

“Aemon. Aemon Targaryen.” He receives that piece of news later, much later when he has little to none care for it. Now it is his turn to ask her the reason he finds her here, out in the cold inside this personal godswood of hers.

“Why?”

All along she has managed to divert her gaze from meeting his. “I don’t know,” her fingers twitch as she tries to waive the question. “Guilt perhaps.”

“For what?”

“The day we left for home, remember when she leans in towards me and I return the embrace?” Tyrion perks at the mention of home. For Sansa, a Northerner through and through to have referred to his ancestral home as her own home is a huge, much precious revelation. More than whatever she has to say about the other.

She continues on, not realizing the turn of his focus, “I said something terrible to her.”

“What did you say?”

Sansa repeats the words she has viciously said to another mother whom she truly believes is undeserving of a child yet now when the child is truly lost, she couldn’t help but suffer the repercussion of her own loose tongue, too caught up in her emotions due to the things she has seen with her own eyes.

“I hope your child will be born as whole as the ones I’ve last seen scattered in King’s Landing.”

Tyrion nods; agreeing with her words, or is it a sign of an understanding of where could have come from? He has pushed every good from ever being related to the name of Daenerys Targaryen. He has not believed in God, no, but he believes in her. Having his faith squandered leaves very little virtues in him, perhaps some linger but never will it ever to be extended towards the Mother of Destructions.

A part of him perished in the loss of King’s Landing too.

At times, he wonders if that makes him a monster – to truly believe one is incapable of goodness.

To his surprise, he hears the sentiment echoes through her lips.

“I am a monster am I not?” her voice small, shoulder hunches from the weight of guilt – a tall child once again yet too small for the cruelty this world is adept with. It is moments like this that highlight the gap between their age, how she simply is still young to experience so much. He places his hand on her lap, trying to soothe her mixed emotions. He could understand her guilt better now and seeing how Sansa could extend such to even her one true enemy is a sign that she has a bigger heart than anyone he has ever met before.

“Perhaps we both are Sansa.” Whatever she has turned to, whenever she goes, he would always, always be there by her side.

“Did he die because I wish him ill?” her voice croaks, begging for him to dismiss her worry.

He shakes his head. even if he understands her position, worrying over their child’s wellbeing, it is silly to assume responsibility for something she has no control of, “If only wishing is enough to make a difference.” He could have wished for a whole lot. First for his own mother, second for his own impediment to forsake him. For Jamie to not die, Cersei too somehow, Myrcella, Tommen while Joffrey could spiral straight to hell for all that he cares. He turns and he immediately recognizes that longing look reflected in her very eyes, wishing for her own family, wishing for Robb because he knows by now how fond she is of her brother. He stands up, picking up the shovel and resume what Sansa has begun before, digging a small grave underneath this weirwood tree with the hope that it could offer the little soul protection far beyond the realms of the living.

Sansa truly believes in such, and Tyrion would die before he starts disrespecting her beliefs, especially when she has at one point in her life have had her faith betrayed by the circumstances she was forced into. Now, now her faith has returned, stronger than ever. Could it be being forced to nothingness again and again only makes you crave more for an invisible blessing from the unknown of mightier power? If such the is the case, he himself must not have been fully tested for he still, to this day, devoid of such hold to any deity. 

He holds that thought close, as firm as his two hands holding the handle of the shovel. With each heap of dirt pushed aside, a realization dawned on him; he could now imagine the unquenchable pain to lose so much it will physically split himself into two as he looks at his dearest sitting close by.

It will be the utmost cruelty, but it appears what Cersei promised him had indeed appeared, of loving someone so much he would fear to be without it.

At least Cersei is no longer here to the taking.

Perhaps it would be wise not to wish for Cersei to live.

“Do you think our child will get to live?” she asks between his grunts. It is still shallow for a standard grave, but it seems deep enough to hide the offering from being dug up by those who don’t know.

He wipes his hands clean from the dirt, throwing the spade away, “I will make sure of it.” He pulls Sansa closer, her head against his chest before he plants a kiss against her forehead.

“I’ll protect you both.”

The tremor ringing in his voice signals undeterred determination instead of weakness. She inhales her relief yet still silently begging for forgiveness from the only source she recognizes.

Together they place the offering to the dead inside the grave, using their bare hands to scoop the soil, offering an honest work with sweats as yet another gift, to a child who deserves so much than what he is allowed for.

\------------

Witnessing Sansa losing sleep over such a thing is the reason why he is filled with fury when that madwoman sent an assassin to his home, for his wife, for his child.

Oh, he kills him alright. All kinds of stabs needed to cut one’s cling to life. He thanks whoever is in charge of the night portion of the realms for bestowing a deep unforgiving sleep to his pregnant wife while he battles that bastard just next to her in the dark.

Daenerys wishes to see a monster.

He will send news she has always been in the presence of one.

“I will see that the body is burnt, my lord.” A reassuring voice coming from one of his men, followed by a gentle tug that frees his own hands from clutching the body. He nods, exhaustion sweeps through his being as he props his body against the cold wall, watching as they move further from him.

The stench of blood sways his decision of returning to his wife and the dimming rage comes back full force. Daenerys needs to know he knows. She needs to understand that the world is not hers for the taking, that they will not stay still as she toys with them.

His eyes wild, thinking of the best way to send a message for the Queen to stop fucking with his family.

The small procession carrying the offender’s body is getting smaller in his sight. He chases after them; a plan has not yet manifest fully but it is there, somewhere, deep within the trench of his dark thoughts.

\----------

_“Dearest Targaryen Queen, _

_Forgive me for the delay. I present to you, a small gift._

_Tyrion Lannister”_

Daenerys’s scoff delays Jon from taking a sip of his morning drink, eyebrows raise at such a response from his wife. The smell of freshly baked loaves of bread, and wafting scent of hearty stew beckoning him to dig in – simple dish is always his favorite; it reminds him of old days of being a mere bastard and a Night’s Watch, down at the bottom of the chain before suddenly rises up too high and too far from his liking. He watches her placing the small parchment aside, motioning for the messenger to come forward with the wooden box he is carrying with him.

“What does it say?”

She ignores him, her gaze loyal to the gift now placed in front of her. Another deep voice at the end of the table rises a notch just for a moment, trying to steal the Queen’s attention and Jon’s voice drowns it as quickly.

It is a beauty on its own; the box, plain reddish hue, sturdy with a small belting of gold around its edges that matches the four claws that support its weight.

_Lannister’s golden lion. _

She opens it gingerly, curious now with a sudden gift that is said to be delayed_. _

Laid carefully on top of a bed made of dried flowers, an orb made from ivory. It steals a gasp from her own lips. The orb is carved carefully to look like a dragon’s egg, with scales deep enough she can feel the ridges scraping the tip of her fingers. If the orb has been bigger, she would have been lulled into believing that she has been gifted with another child. 

Slowly she picks up the orb, imagining that there could be a white, so pure a dragon inside it. Lifting it up, the dried flowers fall back into the box, revealing a long handle attached to the orb. It is quite long, sleek and clean from any engraving, not until her gaze rests at the end of it where it has been carved to mimic a dragon’s claws entrapping a sphere within.

“What is this?” she speaks more to herself, puzzled with the gift. Yes, it a magnificent gift, a beauty to anyone that has the chance to look at it, yet it offers amazement at the same amount it offers her bewilderment.

The messenger, realizing now that he has the answer the Queen seeks, bows lower before he speaks it, “A baby rattle, Your Highness. Lord Tyrion made it himself.”

“…..a rattle?.... this big?.... this late?” her eyes narrow at the audacity but her hand begins to shake the rattle, surprised that it makes a sound. A figure comes closer, standing by her side and Jon stares at them both disapprovingly.

Daario fishes the rattle out from his queen’s fingers, staring at its length. A revelation dawns on him; his snickers grow into a burst of full-blown laughter before it subsides, his hands returning the gift back to Daenerys’s hands.

“He kills the one we sent for her. That is his remains.” Daenerys rises her eyebrows higher, wondering which bones have been made for each part. The rattling continues with each shake and she wonders what is contained inside the orb that allows such sound. He returns to his seat, leaving the Queen alone as she becomes lost with her recent possession, shoveling what remains on his plate before he realizes that Jon is sending him a murderous glare. Amused by his reaction, he flips his fork on his plate, savoring the moment before he addresses it.

“I am here to fulfill the Queen’s requests.” The Queen’s husband knows all about them. He has waited for retaliation, sleeps with one eye opens, counting on him to challenge him for a duel. A desire has grown within him to see for himself the kind of man that is worthy of Daenerys Targaryen’s heart. To feel his bones under his feet, to show her how unworthy such man is to not be grateful for the love she has given him. 

Yet nothing comes from him. Jon, Aegon whatever the hell his name is, he does not welcome him to his table, but he does not dismiss him entirely from it too.

The Queen’s mistress leans forward, enunciating every word, trying his best to rattle the other’s ego, coaxing any excuse for him to draw his daggers, “Every. Single. Request.”

The recipient to such taunting appears unmoved by it, not even a flinch. There is a flicker of boredom in his eyes, matching his own rude stare. 

“I couldn’t care less about the level of servitude you offer the Queen,” Jon replies with a condescending smile.

Daario, as much as he has convinced himself he is alright with the arrangement he has once himself begged for Daenerys herself to agree upon, could not help himself from feeling used now that she has a legal husband. He could feel the pain intended by the remark. He retaliates, toying with his dagger before he speaks, “That being said why are you mad now?”

Jon ignores him completely, turning to his wife who is still mesmerized with the gift sent by an angry husband. Despite the distance between them now, he knows what she is imagining. Even without ever laying his hands on dragon’s eggs, purely based on the tales he has been told, he could deduce the very thought she has at the moment. She is rubbing her thumb against the grain of the scales, too focused on something that is not even real.

Whatever he has for his _sister, _he has buried it deep after their last encounter. Wanting, craving to have a fresh beginning with his wife he has without realizing neglected, he focuses only on her and their child. But alas he loses both and upon learning that her anger is thirsty for death and her lover has been enabling her, he is truly disappointed.

Coupled with a sharp pain he couldn't trace back to whom. 

“She didn’t kill our child Dany. What will it take for you to comprehend that much?” _At least the attempt fails, _such is what he tells himself to settle his own erratic thoughts.

Daenerys feigns her annoyance of being question; rolling her eyes exaggeratedly, “At ease husband. It is not as if this is the first time. The gods are with her.”

Silence, as he tries to comprehend her curt reply.

_At least all the attempts fail. _

He loses his appetite. Rising up from his seat, he looks at her first before he rests his stern gaze on Daario, “I am warning you now; stay away from them. We have bigger matters to deal with. The realms need sane ruler not confined to her own vendetta.”

Daario rips the bread with his teeth, munching it open-mouthed, not having any reason to submit to the warning.

Jon leaves, only managing to drink a cup of tea before he meets the small council.

“You allow him to talk to you like that?” Daario comes too close, nuzzling her neck, breathing in her scent. She ignores him. Ignore the very attention she craves from her husband. It doesn’t match with the oddity of the gift, where there is a line of the scales not lining up perfectly with the rest – a lid perhaps, to put the things that make noise when shaken.

“Say the words and I would end him.” he continues to breathe suggestions he has been offering since he familiarizes his way back to her bed.

“Or perhaps he will end you,” she speaks softly as she tries to twist the top open but fails.

Daario is surprised by the certainty ringing from her words. She is different this Daenerys; not the one he has spent countless intimate hours with far back in Mereen. Taken aback, he stops searching for her lips, but his hand remains buried deep into her long locks, “We don’t know that. I, certainly don’t.”

“Oh, I know,” she says through gritted teeth, frustrated with the orb that seems adamant to keep it's content secret. Finally, she turns to her lover, handing the rattle, needing help to twist the lid of the orb free.

He takes it, identifies the lid before he twists it loose for her.

“Leave him be.” she reminds her lover not to do what he has always wished since he gets the news of their union. Daario eyes her with suspicions, trying to gauge the degree of love she still carries for him or if it is ever there in the first place. He has begun to learn what Daenerys truly seeks, adoration; an unlimited amount of it and he is willing to offer it all, yet she seeks it from the one source that wouldn’t quench her thirst for it.

“You still love him?” he offers the rattle to her, just for a fraction of a second, before he pulls it back closer to him. Daenerys does not take being denied of her desire graciously as she winds her fingers around the handle and pulls it hard, free from his clutch.

She twists it to the last rim, but she stops herself from opening it entirely, second-guessing what the content could be. If the raw materials needed for the gift is entirely harvested from a body, it leaves very little for her mind to imagine what the content might be…

But first, she must placate her lover’s hurt feelings. She knows she is not being fair to any of them, but she needs Jon because he is the last of Targaryen – the last _male_ claimant of the throne. Letting him free from their bond might result in him perhaps in future after enough whispers mucking up space in his mind, he might one day claim his birthright.

She convinces herself that _that_ is the reason she has to keep him close.

But everyone knows she fears the other much harrowing possibility, in which her husband goes running to claim what is between Sansa’s legs.

A surge of jealousy rises within and she grabs Daario’s hand, pulling him down closer to her lips. The kiss is far from chaste, but Jon has seen much worse and he is not even there in the room anymore. Desperate kisses, harsh and unbending, each trying to outdo the other, only stopping when each is convinced the other is back underneath their spell. 

“I love him…. but by gods, I hate him.” she pants her reassurance warm onto his lips.

“What about the red-headed one?” he whispers back with the same urgency. 

“Perchance it would be wise to heed my husband’s advice this time,” drawing a long breath to calm her wild heartbeats, she begins to think of the power she has lost as she mourns her child. While she is blanketed by grief, Jon has earned the trust of her small council if not more. His voice and stances have begun to be seen as laws by others who will always put their faith in the hands of a male ruler. 

She has to be careful.

Suddenly remembering what she has at hands, she lifts the lid, placing it on the table before she tips the orb to release its mysterious contents.

They bounce all over her plate. Not clean, some still have traces of blood on it.

Teeth.

She stares at them, counting, before she picks one, rolling it between her two fingers, “One ought to be careful with a person who takes their time to send a reminder.” She grins with the sight; a cautionary reminder of how the old dwarf actually has it in him to be vicious yet still full of flare as expected from a Lannister.

\-----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently, I need the chaos provided by my kids to actually write. Now they are off to school, it is too quiet and the words just do not flow. 
> 
> It is coming to an end, my dearest readers. 
> 
> Leave comments, would love to wake up to the notifications. Thank you!


	19. Of Cubs and Pups (Part 1)

A small sigh, a slight rustle of the blanket being pulled far from any contact with the skin. It is unbearably hot for her and if she has it in her to sleep naked, free from any fabric, she would have.

_Tyrion would have loved that. _

She blushes at the thought, her free hand roams over her protruding belly absentmindedly in the quiet of the night. Sleep has eluded her at this point in pregnancy. There is not one comfortable position to lie in; she knows for sure – she has tried them all.

While listening to her husband soft snore – it pales compared to hers; she has during one nap, been woken up on her own. It must have been loud since she wakes up, only to look at Tyrion burying his face on the table, a fail attempt to cover his own guffaw at the sight. Trying her best to gather what left of her dignity, she glares at him, lips pouting before she continues her slumber.

_What a waste, training a woman to be prim and proper when they forget to let me know all would be gone with pregnancy. _

She bites her lower lip, thinking about how she has been craving for physical intimacy when she enters the fourth moon of her pregnancy. It is, to this day, a revelation she couldn’t quite fathom, even when Tyrion has assured her that he has read it somewhere, heard it himself that pregnancy has such effect to some. His assurances vary, but all definitely has ended on the bed.

_“It comes with pregnancy, my love.” _

_“I don’t mind being used in such ways. Glad, even, to be at your service.” _

_“The day I say ‘no’ to such an invitation is the day you are in the presence of an imposter.”_

Tyrion is quick to celebrate each minute change of her body. Her swollen feet are massaged every night. She has more than enough scars on her body yet the sight of more as the result of her skin stretching to accommodate the pregnancy still manages to bring a downward curve of her lips. Her husband kisses each of them, regaling her on stories of how they are marks of the brave, of warriors that do not shy from anything in bringing new life to the world.

By then she does not the pregnancy excuse to jump on her poor husband.

She stifles her chuckles, not wanting to wake him up.

The swift movement of the drapes, blown by the wind entering through the widely opened window catches her attention, bringing it to what used to be an empty corner of the chamber which now stands a grand crib, fit for a king.

She has chastised her husband over such scrupulous preparations for the arrival of their child. Tyrion has gone mad somehow. Everything people claim is a must-have he has rushed over to get himself despite all the things he has read that by right should have prepared him to be reasonable. But then she too has been unstoppable, hand stitching all of their child’s clothes, blankets, pillows.

They are happy. And she figures, after everything that has happened to the both of them, apart, and together, they are allowed to be a little carried away in their happiness.

Tyrion lets out a small grunt in his sleep, before nestling closer against her body, hugging her round belly while he is asleep. Adorable isn’t enough a word to describe how precious such sight is; the length of his body following the curve of her growing belly with one hand splayed on it as she is approaching the last moon of her pregnancy. But as precious as it is, she finds herself waking up more frequently throughout the night from the heat of having his body too close to her. Trying to extricate herself from him especially when she is heavily pregnant has proven itself to be a daunting task which is why she finds herself feeling victorious whenever she could pull it off without waking him up.

Quietly, she places her feet firm on the ground as she rubs her back. The pain has come and gone for almost a week now and tonight it is becoming too much to bear alone. She grits her teeth as another wave hits her whole body, its intensity growing even when she doubts it can get any worse. As if someone is holding her backbone firmly and twisting it with no mercy while another pair of hands seize her hipbone and shove it hard so the ends would meet with no inch to spare in between. She whimpers, too terrified to even turn and wakes her husband up for support.

Another wave comes and by then she is floored by its intensity. Her knees give out and now she is kneeling on the ground, one hand holding her belly while the other is holding her body up.

“Tyrion…,” she calls out, but through the pain, it only translates to a dull whisper.

She is muted by the agony of her body preparing itself for birth, incapable of moving as more intense waves come one after the other. Finally, finally, between the ripples of pain, she manages a cry loud enough to wake Tyrion.

“Sansa….?” His hands are quick to wander across the empty sheet before understanding the meaning behind the cold, forcing him to sit up and rubs the sleepiness from his eyes.

“Sansa!” his voice urgent now, watching his wife’s face beaded with perspiration.

She wants to tell him it is time. She wants to tell him what exactly needs to be done but knowing him, she is convinced he is prepared for everything – he is Tyrion. The knowledgeable Tyrion who preps himself for all circumstances…

Yet a quick glance on his face only reveals a paralyzing fear so potent it freezes all his muscles.

For the briefest moment, the pain is drowned by worry. She feels as if he might shatter if she as much as breathe onto his skin. Her stretched fingers are left cold bereft from the warmth from his hands and it is at that moment she understands where this uncalled reaction comes from.

The birth of him has claimed his own mother.

Before the fear in his eyes harden into steel, Sansa promises him something she has no power over -

“I promise you….” She silences another contraction, burying her growl far behind her throat, trying to trick him into believing that she is strong enough for this, “… I won’t die.”

A pause, as colors return to his cheeks. He is quick to grab her hands, pulling himself together as he slides down in front of her, finally having enough sense to address the situation.

“Don’t…” _die. _The last word is too painful to be said out loud, but she knows him too well, understands his words – spoken or not; all of them.

She kisses his hands, grabbing them tight, as tight as she would hold onto her promises,

“I won’t leave you alone.”

\---

Hours later, a healthy baby boy is born. Red hair, blue eyes.

Alder Lannister.

\---

“Alder my love….” Tyrion is cooing to the little angel, holding his son close to his chest, stealing him away from Sansa as she finally allows herself a decent rest after the gruesome labor. He stands far away from the bed, closer to the window as he whispers sweet nothings to his son, inhaling the heavenly scent of innocence.

The boy feels right in his arms, despite years of emptiness, never allowed to carry his own niece and nephews. He tells himself it is for their own good; that he is incapable of doing it right, humoring himself that he will one day hold a child in his arms, his own, not just a loan from other parents but his own.

He never truly believes it could ever happen. Yet here he is, a perfection cradled close to his own beating hard,

“Mine….”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. I know what I want to write, I just have a hard time trying to finish it. I know it is shorter than usual, but I thought let just put it out to remind myself how good it is to post a new chapter.


	20. Of Cubs and Pups (Part 2)

_ Seven years later.  _

“How did it end? You and her?”

Sansa’s sudden question stemming from nowhere forces Tyrion to turn to her immediately, accusing himself as hearing things whispered by the ghosts of his past. Sansa chuckles, tucking her hair neatly behind her ears – an unnecessary thing to do what with the wind blowing fiercely. She nods at him, signaling that yes, she means to have an answer to her question before she sprints forward, catching Alder from behind, her elbows hooking his arms tightly before she spins around, the weight of her son bothers her not in the least.

Laughter erupts and it continues even louder when the two land on the ground unceremoniously.

Tyrion’s cheeks ache with the pleasure of smiling.

It is a pleasant weather; perfect for a stroll by the beach and they are doing exactly that – the small family of three. No one plans it out. It begins simply with an outing to the port meant solely for him, but Alder insists to tag along, and Sansa chides him when he tries to explain to his son that he would not take long, promising to be back before supper.

He cuts the visit to the port short. He would rather be with his family than trying to address issues that will always have its own place later.

Catching up with Sansa and Alder, he helps Sansa stands up and Alder, upon noticing that his mother is being aided by a different set of hands, quickly let her hands free, running knee-deep in the water, arms wide,

“Look Father! I am a fish!”

Tyrion enjoys a playful banter with his son, so he is quick to shout back, “Last week you said you are a lion!”

“And the week before I was a wolf!” 

Another voice pitches in, “Not too deep Alder!”

Instead of standing up, she tugs Tyrion's hands gently, asking him to sit next to her. He sighs, knowing that it would be reckless to pretend that he has forgotten her query, but still, he tries.

Tyrion pushes hard against the ever-boneless beach, making a dent following the curves of his small feet. Sansa mimics him; pushing a temporary fossil of her own next to his.

“What was your question again?” his voice muffled by the sudden strong wind blowing against them.

With her head thrown back, she laughs that same unfiltered laughter he has grown very accustomed to; a feat she indulges heavily these past seven years as Daenerys has chosen to ignore their entire existence.

Once her laughter subsides, she speaks, “I was a child, but I wasn’t obtuse. I observe enough.”

“I….,” Tyrion halts his answer, not knowing how she would react to it. He has killed and has caused death as the results of his decisions, but Shae’s death is quite personal to him, only second to his own father’s death. While he has indulged Sansa with the details of Tywin’s death, what happened prior to it has been kept to himself, not feeling the necessity to tell all to his beloved wife.

It is not that he is keeping a secret, but he has been reluctant to revisit the experience of such betrayal.

But things are different now. And he is loved. _So why not?_

“I found her in my father’s bed. I strangled her with that thick, golden necklace my father gave her.” He locks his gaze on his son, not wanting to face Sansa’s reaction - whatever it might be, full-frontal.

She is not truly surprised by it; Tyrion has indeed told her of every bit that happened after Joffrey’s death. It just so happened that he skips one death to explain the death of the other although, from his explanation, one small detail shines brighter than the obvious revelation thus she chooses to address it.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” her palm places on his knee, asking for his attention. Tyrion does not disappoint, placing his own above hers. A warm smile begins on her lips before she continues, “Is it a Lannister’s custom to bestow necklace to their women?”

Tyrion forces a chortle, with Sansa, one can never truly guess her reaction might be. Her answer puzzles him, as evident by her needs to explain herself after she reads his expression.

“Joffrey gave me one, you give me this one and your father…”

An understanding clouds over his features and he nods, amused by it. “Huh…apparently it runs in family.”

Alder, who seems to have had his fair share of the saltwater, jogs back towards his parents with a handful of shells he has picked up. He plops down, placing the common treasure at one side, freeing his hands to gather the sand to build a castle similar to the one he is currently residing in. His parents quietly follow through, adding few details onto his creations before he stops their hovering hands.

“Thank you for your help but let me do it on my own first.”

Sansa and Tyrion mirror each other with their reactions; lips pursed with their laughter teetering behind their teeth. They scoot a bit further back, allowing the boy some space.

“I remember building Winterfell from snow.” Sansa looks far away, staring at the vast distance of the sea, looking so lost as if, if she peers hard enough, she would be blessed with a familiar sight of home.

Tyrion, to this day, feels inadequate for his failure to bring his wife back to Winterfell. He has sent countless appeals to Daenerys, for her to reconsider Sansa’s sentence. He doubts she reads any, or perhaps she does; what else could explain the sightings of Drogon every now and then at this side of the sea.

He knows Sansa does not put the blame on him, but still…it could have been the best gift he could have ever gifted her.

The silence is broken by Sansa’s muttering, “And then one brat appeared and ruined it.”

Knowing Sansa and her shallow penchant for rudeness, he speaks his suspicion out loud, “Did you slap that boy?”

A slight coloring appears on her cheeks. Clearing her throat, she retorts back, “Of course, my love. One does not do well to cross Sansa House of Stark.”

They turn their attention back to the mixture of the best of both of them. The sandcastle is getting bigger and lumpier on the east side.

But Alder is grinning proudly over his handiwork.

Sansa claps her hand, celebrating every achievement and gifting her son a long peck on both of his cheeks.

The three of them marvel at his creation, asking for details to which the boy is quick to supply with detailed explanations. Sansa is beaming with pride, still staring at her wonder even after he has run out of things to say.

“Alder,” she calls him, dusting the sands clinging onto his clothes. She does not know what compels her to say it, but she has caught herself imagining a life his son would experience, a kind one. “Alder,” she begins again. “When it is time to gift someone you love with a necklace make sure you consult me first will you?”

Tyrion howls at her possessive intonation. Thinking so far ahead when the child is mere seven! 

But as he reflects back, he wonders if Sansa is truly satisfied with the one he has made for her. Using his son as a mediator, he nudges on the topic with regard to the necklace.

“Alder, ask your mother if there is anything wrong with the one I made for her.”

“Nothing wrong with it. But I couldn’t help but feel that this wolf seems so lonely. She is in dire need of a friend.”

“Really?” Tyrion stares at his wife, for a moment feeling so lost as to how he ends up with someone like her before he gathers himself back, trying to see if there is a white lie behind her response.

Alder, who has been caught surprised by his mother’s question, and not truly understanding the reasoning behind it, tries his best to fill in the pause in the conversation.

“Father, don’t be thick; mother is asking for a new necklace.”

“Is that so Alder?”

To which he nods fervently.

Sansa pulls Alder in for a hug, “How about, instead of me, we give you a gift?”

He immediately brightens with the suggestion, “A gift? For me?”

Sansa nods, sending a glance at the clueless husband of hers before speaking to her son.

“A sister? Or a brother perhaps?” They have been careful the two of them. It is not that she is traumatized by her own experience of labor, but she wants to make sure she is ready for another instead of rushing it all together. And of course, she wants to make sure that Daenerys would do no harm to her family and seeing that they have been left alone, she thinks to herself, why not? Tyrion, on the other hand, seems to be content with just one. She thinks the labor scars him more because he has truly experienced what is at stake. But Sansa is too used with the idea of a large family that despite postponing it, the thought still lingers at the back of her head, getting louder with each passing year. 

She nudges her son for an answer.

“I think…. I wouldn’t mind sharing.”

“What a generous boy,” Tyrion comments at his thoughtful answer. Alder is still a child and he is a radiant kid but there are moments where he seems mature for his age, contemplating and truly considering his answer before saying it out loud.

Alder snorts at the mention of boy. “I am a man Father. I am not a boy; I am taller than you.”

“And I, till this day, blame your mother for that.”

They all laugh – standing up, saying goodbye to the sea and promising each other that they will return soon.

Alder is skipping happily, leaving his parents behind him as they head back to their home.

“Truly?” Tyrion squeezes her hand, wanting to make sure he has heard her right. It scares him, sure, but another Alder? How can he say no to that?

The revealing smile on Sansa’s face, together with the muted orange rays from the setting sun, paint a beautiful picture of a woman drunk with happiness.

“I think I am already with another.”

_\----------_

_“I can’t help but feeling anxious each time we are blessed with another pregnancy. It dampens the joy.”_

_“You are worried we will have one like you?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Possibly. But the way I see it, might as well be us. To be blessed with such. Because we would have understood. We would have loved him or her anyway. If a silly girl, that dreamt of handsome knights, tall and strong sweeping her off her feet, can grow up and see the beauty in what the world deems as imperfections, the world can grow too and see beyond that.”_

_“It wouldn’t be easy. And I weathered many years to know it’s not happening soon.”_

_“Perhaps not by tomorrow. Or a year or two. Perhaps it will take generations. But it can start with just us two.” _

_“You could have been a much, much better queen.” _

_“I am. In this little kingdom meant for us. I am a Queen and you are my King.”_

_\-----_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise cubS and pupS. 
> 
> Happy reading people! Thank you so much for your support. It helps me keep going.


	21. Of Cubs and Pups (Part 3)

The night is ending, clearing its path for a new beginning. Jon is still reading, keeping himself equipped with news from the realm, earning his followers' trust and peoples’ support has been overwhelming, finally making peace with Targaryen’s rule. Daenerys is not completely daft to let all powers reside in Jon’s hands, but the public have made peace with him, and by such, resenting her more for her way of claiming the throne. So here they are, sharing the throne in the end, with her doing what she does best as a conqueror, leaving Jon the menial tasks of ensuring every little component of the realms she has claimed to co-exist peacefully. They both have their own small councils, and both so far have managed to maneuver their paths to share a cohesive end goal. It works, and she is no longer burdened with tasks she has failed before and would never admit she has no appetite for.

She looks at Jon earnestly- very adept he is in pretending she is not in the same room as he is.

Daenerys takes a sip of her drink, biding time before she broaches the private issue that has been the loudest whisper in the castle.

“You could have anyone you wish for. I do not understand why you deny yourself such pleasure.” True. She might have to let go of the power in the ruling, but she still has her own people in the castle. While she has been indulging herself in Daario’s presence, Jon has chosen to keep to himself. No woman has been called to his chamber, nor him visiting anyone in the middle of the night.

It is odd, to say the least. She has always assumed that such pleasure is irresistible especially to men.

His gaze unaverred, still locked unto the piece of parchment while he answers curtly. “Never meant for me. I was, after all, a sworn Night’s Watch.”

She has heard of the oath, but she has always doubted its authenticity. How could she not? Whether a woman is willing or not, men always find their way to that cave between her legs. No one is honorable enough to go without just because.

“Certainly I couldn’t be your first?” she drawls with her words. Amused if such turns to be the truth.

Jon clears his throat; his discomfort is visible and uncontained. “No,” he stares harder at the written words in front of him, now no longer carrying any meaning as his minds succumb to the call of the dead. “Another.” His voice is quieter, almost as if he is speaking the word to himself. 

“Tell me about this another.”

It is his turn to take a sip of his drink. The parchment in his hands is rolled neatly, returned to its spot amongst others on the table. He sifts through his memories, spoiling himself with the memory of the cave where they should have stayed quietly before death comes for her – no, death has come for both of them.

He decides to humor his wife - no, his aunt of the details. 

“Ygritte. A wildling. Red hair, full of spirit. Put a few arrows through me.” his chuckles fail to lessen the blow Daenerys feels as she realizes that Jon is drawn to fiery beauties.

She swallows her pride; Jon has stopped being her husband years ago. She has made it hard for him. He tries and she has made sure he fails each time. One day he simply stops, and Daenerys doesn’t have it in her to beg for his attention once willingly offered.

“Find yourself another red-haired beauty then. Just because I couldn’t doesn’t mean the line should die with me.”

Jon ignores her words. If he is given the power to decide, he would rather have the line dies with them two as the last Targaryen. He is, at times repulsed by his own lineage. Him being legitimized has made him feel more and more like a bastard each day.

As if she is listening to his thoughts, she repeats the degrading status to him,

“Have bastards. I will claim them as mine.”

“No. No, you wouldn’t.” He knows her. Her jealousy will be the end of her and definitely the end of his bastards should he have any. If he has any doubts, it all perished with that sly grin she is giving him at the moment.

Targaryen will die with them, and he hopes Drogon will follow them to the grave.

With her long fingers, she fishes a neatly folded parchment he is done with, one that is pushed beneath the rest. Initially wishing just to take a glimpse of its content, her gaze is halted at the name invokes and the damning news that follows after.

“Another pregnancy….?” Her voice breaks as it is laced heavily with resentment.

“Sansa Stark is blessed with another pregnancy.” She speaks in awe, repeating the news to the room as if Jon hasn’t read the news with his own eyes. Jon releases a desperate sigh at her response – he should have burned the parchment the moment he learns of its content. He keeps tabs of Sansa. How could he not? If he doesn’t, Daenerys would have. Better him than her. At least he wants her alive. Daenerys on the other hand…

“I’m curious now. Clearly they have been too comfortable in their den, they forget that dragon still exists.” She speaks through gritted teeth; anger is evident and undisputed. If one dares to look closely, there is certain darkness behind her mesmerizing violet eyes. The kind of madness only a person who has committed an act so atrocious would possess. 

“The eldest name day is coming, is it not?” She could plan it. Doused their food with poison, trap them in the hall and let her people kill her sworn rival. After all, isn’t that how her family perished? She should follow their footsteps, that’s the only right way to honour their deaths.

Jon bangs the desk with all his might, ripping the visual Daenerys is clearly enjoying too much. She snaps back to reality, glaring at him who dares to interfere and end her beautiful dream.

“Let her be Dany. Seven years and you didn’t as much acknowledge the existence of their child. Why let yourself be bothered with them now?”

“I forbid you to harm them.” His words final.

It doesn’t sit well with her. He is getting too cocky with the power she lends him.

“Forbid me?” her tone is mocking him.“Oh, Jon Snow, what power do you have against me? I elevate you to this position, I could also rip you off to nothingness.” 

The infuriated Jon leans in dangerously; he is sick of her, sick of her power play, cursing his blindness for aligning himself with such a destructive force.

"I swear to Gods Dany, touch them and you will know the wrath of a deranged wolf. "

\----------

“The Queen wants to celebrate Alder’s name day.” Tyrion finally admits what he has been trying to hide meticulously. 

Sansa balks at his words, regretting her eagerness to be told of everything. “She wants him dead is more likely.”

She could feel her pulse quickens and with it, a steel claw grips her heart, forcing it to beat harder. Almost swooning with the pain, she clutches the nearest chair, steadying her swaying stature. “Write to her that we have to decline.”

She steals a long breath before she continues, “I am counting days as we speak. No one is leaving or coming until I have concluded this pregnancy.”

Tyrion nods, all while leading her back to the bed, not wanting her to overexert herself. 

It strains her this time around. She learns the hard way that each pregnancy promises a different set of challenges. Her heart has been threatening to explode with every looming moon. It is not the same. Very different than Alder and at times she suspects that this would spell the end of her. She is exhausted all the time and by the end of the pregnancy, Tyrion has made it compulsory for her to lie down on the bed, her requests are all entertained within the parameter of their chamber. She has had few cases of bleedings by then, so it is only natural for her to submit to his request to stay put, knowing that it is only done for the sake of their child and her own health.

But there is always a rare sliver of happiness despite the circumstances. In her case, it manifested itself in the form of her own beloved son. Alder has been tentative and very eager to be involved throughout the journey. He speaks to his sibling, singing lullabies that she has sung to him. He prods her belly, delighted when his sibling returns his touch.

She moans and complains to her husband, but in the end, it is bearable after all.

Until that cursed letter makes its way to them.

Agitating her to the very core of her being, which has resulted in her ignoring her husband’s plea for her to stay put. From the moment he receives it, Tyrion has made sure Alder is always within their sight. The moment she learns of it, her hands are practically glued to her belly. It is useless, she knows, but what else can be done to protect them?

“Tell her no. Promise me she would not touch our children. I…” her sight wavers as she sees spots suddenly.

The news upsets her. And her body is too quick to respond to the looming danger. She shakes her head, wanting to clear her head as she waits for her sight to return. Turning to her husband, she pleads, almost sobbing from the overwhelming fear.

“I can’t live with those possibilities…”

“Sansa, I understand. No one is going anywhere.” _For now._ He knows they have to fulfill the invitation eventually. He could only postpone the inevitable, the same way he offers Daenerys a different option from sentencing Sansa with death. 

“I hate that wo…” she pauses, feeling a gush of fluid over her thighs, trickling down her calves before pooling on the floor. Her hands go straight to the source, all while calling her husband’s name.

“Tyrion…. I swear…. Did that woman just make me relieve myself in such a distasteful manner?!” With her sight trained to the dampened clothes, Tyrion follows its direction, gaping at the unexplained fluid coming out from his wife.

It takes his mind a few stretched moments to go through what he has read to finally come to a justified answer explaining the perplexing instant between them. 

“Your water just broke... Sansa, your water just broke!”

As if the situation is not delirious enough on its own, Alder chooses to appear at that particular moment. “Mother…you piss on the floor…” and his giggles turn Sansa’s cheeks a few shades darker.

“No, I did not!” indignant she is at the innocent assumption. 

Tyrion, on the other hand, is trying his best to be the voice of reason. “Alder, I need you to call for help. Your sister is coming soon.”

“My sister?” he is surprised by his father’s word.

The same sentiment is shared by his mother. Tyrion has always offered a safe answer each time she asks him what he is hoping for. _A healthy child_ – that has been his constant. She is surprised to learn that he does, in fact, have a preference.

“His sister? We do not know yet. Don’t give me false hope.” Her voice is small, partly trying to deceive her own longing all while finally, finally tasting that same pain she has experienced before. “Don’t give _him _false hope!” pointing at Alder who is grinning at the prospect of being the only son in the family.

Tyrion who is now teetering between a sense of urgency and sanity – too much has happened in the span of a few hours, snaps, raising his voice demanding everyone to follow through.

“Fine! The little one is coming. Sansa, on the bed, now! Alder, run along and calls the servants and midwife!”

\-----------

Years after Alder, with labor that is more grueling than before in which death seems to be hovering too close to her, nights are again filled with the cries of not one, but two healthy girls with robust lungs.

Edith and Lilith Lannister.

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think, I really think it will end with 24 chapters. it is because I split this one into three parts that it appears as if I still don't know how to end it. 
> 
> So Dany is back, Jon is Jon. and pregnancy is different each time. 
> 
> Happy Reading!


	22. Of Lions, Wolves, and Dragons (Part 1)

The memories of being in the same room as his mother pushes two little beings – _his sisters_! out from her body is terrifying and something worth pondering. Questions he knows he will spend days in his father’s library searching for answers.

Answers that he hopes would help him to understand himself better. One that would explain why he feels so much, from joy to terror in a mere span of hours.

_Why does Mother pee? Is such a sign that labor is near? _

_How can a human being – given that his sisters are small but still, to exit from there?! He vows to find a better way. _

_How is it that no one finds it's odd that a nine-year-old is allowed to be in the same room? How is it possible that despite the ridiculous amount of people assisting his mother, no one has the mind to push him out of the room? _

_Why people are rushing as if the world is ending instead of beginning? _

_Why is Mother convulsing….? _

_And why…. why does Father look as if he is dying?_

He remembers; no, he swears it will forever be etched in his mind, of the hoarse voice of his Father, screaming,

“You cannot leave me alone Sansa!”

He has stayed, listening to his sisters crying, wondering if he would be allowed to name one. He has stayed, watching her Mother’s limp body shaken the way one would shake a rattle. He stays until he sees her heaves in a shallow breath.

But he stays not for his Father’s tears to subside.

He does not understand. But he feels it.

His pain and his tears as if they are his own.

\---------------

Tyrion finds his son - his eldest, hiding between the nook of the roots of the weirwood tree.

_Just like his mother_. Seeking solace there whenever their hearts are aching.

He stands next to him; his one hand is placed gently on Alder’s shoulder while the other is holding a box, pressed to his side. The young one recognizes the familiar hold, leaning his wet cheek against its course skin. The shame to be caught crying combines with the relief of being seek out after all that has happened only allows for more tears to flow freely.

“I am sorry you have to witness all that Alder.” Tyrion’s voice is somber and hoarse. He has screamed the way he has never screamed before. The labor is so closed of claiming his wife in return of two daughters. An exchange he would never allow should he is given the option to choose. He is afraid then. He is afraid now. And he knows this new fear is permanent; things are now set on a harsher path that will not be kind to them any longer. 

When his first daughter emerges, Tyrion has been ecstatic. _A healthy girl!_ Exactly like he has hoped for. She is quite small, even when he is the one holding her, yet her cry is loud enough to signal strong lungs. A true beauty, taking after Sansa, just the way all his children should be.

Sansa’s whimper snatches his attention, passing his daughter towards a servant to be cleaned properly. He crawls back next to his wife, who is looking too pale, instantly spiking up his worry over her well-being.

“Something is...,” Sansa tries to explain it to Tyrion. It is as if they are not quite finished just yet. The pain is still lingering somehow. But before she manages to construct a coherent sentence, her expression turns determined, following her instinct to give another push and then, right then another slide-out straight to the hands of the unsuspecting midwife.

There is a stunned silence crashing its presence in the chamber, expanding and filling up space before its abrupt leave and suddenly, suddenly too much is happening at once. Cries, from the new babe, joining her elder sister. Loud voices announcing the little one’s arrival, of shocked gasps to loud exclamations. A grunt, from Sansa before her whole body stirs the way waves to stir in the storm, froths dribbling from her lips the way foams exist at the edge of the beach, being whipped by the unrelenting waves.

“Is Mother alright….?” Alder asks for confirmation.

“She is now.” He takes his place next to his son, his heart heavy with Sansa’s almost demise it clouds the joy of having his daughters. Part of him wants to celebrate their births but a bigger part of him, the part that loves and cherishes his wife more than anything in this world is conflicted.

For a while, the two of them are made so small, soothing their pain underneath the grand old totem of Sansa’s faith. He holds the box on his lap and though not holding his son’s hands, they are both warm from each other’s presence.

“Alder…I know I am asking a lot from you. I know this is far from ideal… ” Tyrion is no fool. He knows what is happening to his wife, but he would not gather those suspicions into a completed thought. But he needs someone to understand the gravity of the situation, and he is sorry he has to rope his son into it. 

“What is it, Father?” Alder’s voice is devoid of its usual light and honeyed tone.

“You and I, we have to do all that we could to protect our family.”

Alder listens to his father, with, if not more focus he has ever given to his tutors. But the way his father speaks, as if he needs him to stand next to him facing whatever storm brewing in his mind…. the little one could not help but asks,

“But you are already the most powerful man here, on this side of the sea. And I am a boy still....” He almost chokes uttering the last sentence. As if he is feeling guilty he is not already a man.

“Power is a fickle thing, Alder. There will always be another, with more at their disposal.”

“But power_ is_ power…Am I wrong?”

With it, Tyrion draws in a long breath, his lips tilted but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, doesn’t convince the young boy that he has given the right answer.

That only burns a brighter grit within him, the need to prove that he is more than capable to face whatever daunting possibilities coming their way. 

“I will be the most powerful man Father. I will protect Mother, my sisters. I will protect you.”

Tyrion nods, proud of him but guilt appears too. He has promised himself that his children’s childhood will be different. They will only know of love and kindness and warmth. He has to swallow the harsh truths now that no matter how hard one wishes to protect them, they will be forced to grow in circumstance none are capable of predicting. Fate dictates what lesson we would all learn, and it seems his kids are not sheltered from the brutes the world has the means to carry.

“What is inside the box Father?”

“Oh, this? It’s something your mother and I do for protection.”

Alder looks puzzled with his vague answer. It is a tradition he respects out of her love for Sansa and perhaps now it would be wise to share it with Alder. He wonders if Alder will scoff at it should he be told about the meaning behind the practice.

He traces the curves of lily he has carved himself on the lid. He doesn’t know why, but the moment he was told of the pregnancy he is so, so convinced it will be a girl. Thus, the choice of the flower. And now he has two more flowers in his life; his ears perked, ready to heed their calling.

When it comes to naming their children, Sansa wants a clean slate. No naming the children after somebody with their own history. She says young ones shouldn’t be shadowed by the previous achievements, nor burdened by their failures.

But even so, Tyrion recognizes the ripple in her eyes each time her gaze falls upon Alder. He must have reminded her of Robb. Tyrion doesn’t know to what extent, but he sure is glad for it. 

For Alder, he has carved a gargantuan black alder tree on the lid. Something solid, strong enough to carry the name of two powerful families. And inside each, he keeps a vital part of their child, an offering to the old gods, buried deep between the roots of the weirwood tree.

It protects Alder for seven years, who is to say it will not work the same for his daughters?

\----------

“She looks like me…..But she also looks like her.. Why does she look like her?”

Sansa’s voice is brittle still. It has been weeks after the horror of the labor and despite all that he has done, the improvements achieved are far too small, being shamed by the efforts poured behind it. He forces himself to be stern with Sansa’s decision of nursing her own children the same way she has done for Alder, stopping her from exerting her strength thus providing two wet nurses for the girls.

She’s not happy, but the lack of arguments from her side pains him more than it pains her. As if she has surrendered to her fate.

He chases such thought at the back of his mind and comes by her side, settling next to his second born.

Lilith has the Lannisters' distinct features yet with auburn hair. Her eyes are magical. One brown, the other blue. As if she carries magic within her, a calm baby, only fussy when her belly is empty.

Edith meanwhile has the Tully blue eyes, bright and blinding like her mother, but if one stares deep enough, long enough, there is this strange shade of purple blended into it that alone is enough to make Sansa and Tyrion change a worried look with each other. But her hair…her hair is of the lightest shade of yellow, almost white, like those who carry the remnants of Valyrion blood…

“How could she look like her…. she is you. And she is me. No dragon in between.” He kisses each of them, an extra kiss on Sansa’s lips before he excuses himself to his solar.

He tells Sansa she has nothing to worry about, yet he scurries to revisit the old whisper he has heard but dismissed, of his mother being left at the mercy of the mad king. But none is left alive to prove it as truth, the one who could have been killed by his own hands. All his insults live though in his mind, pieced together couldn’t have denied what is never said out loud.

_Men's laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors since I cannot prove that you are not mine._

He is numb to his bones when truth stares at him with such intensity. For a moment he wishes that his father would still be alive but comes another breath he is relieved that he has silenced him forever. Should he still be alive to witness Edith’s birth, he would have found a new puppet to install on the throne.

Then he would have to hack his father’s skull open in front of his own children.

How inappropriate.

\--------------

When he finally relays the revelation to Sansa, she just offers a blank stare at her children. At Alder who is holding Lilith’s foot in one hand and Edith’s foot in his left hand, taking turns kissing each. At Lilith who is still sleeping despite it, and Edith who is squirming to be left free. All on her bed; a mixture of lions, wolves, dragons.

Fate favors irony – that much is given with what she is presented with. She has hated dragons, yet she has sown the creature on a blanket meant for a little dragon. She has made an enemy of Targaryen’s, of Lannister’s and yet come to think of it, she has given birth to exactly that, of dragons and lion. Targaryen’s blood, Lannister’s blood; the blood of her enemies, coursing through her children’s veins.

She caresses Lilith’s hair; its colors struggle to mimic hers - more brown than the red she is. Leaning forward, she holds strands of Edith’s hair, softer than corn’s hair, lighter too. Alder watches her mother intently, waiting for her touch too. Her fingers come for his cheek, her thumb rubbing against the corner of his eye.

_They are mine. All of them. _

Sansa leans back against the pillow, closing her eyes, savoring the rare calm one could have with three children. She could feel Tyrion’s hand on her thigh; her reaction must have been confusing to her husband. Grabbing the familiar callous hand, her eyes still close, she whispers an assurance.

“Powerful. Our children will be powerful.”

\------------

Immediately, the truth of Tyrion’s lineage that is now has spilled all over his children; Edith especially, becomes a secret they are desperate to keep. Stalling and stalling each of the Queen’s persistent invitations – they manage for four moons, until one day they couldn’t anymore.

She comes, entering upon Casterly Rock’s sky on Drogon. The newly expanded family hears the roar, but they dismissed it; it isn’t new, that dragon has always flown too close as if he could report back to his mother of what he has seen in the territory of her mother’s enemy.

But today it has brought his riders with him.

A servant runs as fast as his two legs could to his lord’s chamber, not bothering to knock the door nor waits for the invitation to come in.

He pushes it as wide as he could, its hinges groaning, almost screaming when he delivers the news.

“The Queen rides her dragon, my lord! She’s here!”

Edith’s cries are indeed the appropriate response.

\-------------

Sansa is seated on the seat meant for Lord of Casterly Rock, holding Edith close to her chest. Lilith is in her father’s hands, standing in front of Sansa while Alder is perched by her side, his gaze never leaving the door. They wait, in silence, listening to the thunderous footsteps getting closer and closer as if to warn them of the threat forcing her way through.

“She’s our enemy isn’t she?” the young lord speaks his suspicion out loud.

Neither provides him with an answer as at the same time the door opens, revealing the daunting guests.

Alder takes this as a confirmation, moving forward in front of his father, his back straight, shoulder firms, hands neatly clasped behind him,

“You are not welcomed here.”

\--------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story keeps on giving birth to new chapters I am slightly annoyed myself. I hope it is to your liking. I like to develop Alder's characters a bit. It seems like he is a good boy. I like him.
> 
> Happy Reading!


	23. Of Lions, Wolves and Dragons (Part 2)

The little boy’s voice seized Daenerys’s sense of purpose for a moment. Her steps, though not fully halted, has settled to a slower pace, and for a fraction of second, she could, with the streaming rays of sun spilling all over the boy, she could trick herself into seeing her own Aemon, whom should be allowed to live, would have grown slightly bigger if not the same size of the boy in front of her.

Tall, and strong.

The malicious grin attached to her face the moment she arrives here is nicked unceremoniously by a mere boy. 

She does not foresee this. She has barged uninvited into someone else’s home and in her own audacity be served by a brazen reminder of what she has lost. Such realization has then managed to stall her steps, as she eyes the family in front of her.

Jealousy swirls its forked tongue, whispering malevolent odds into her heart.

While the sight stops her, the same could not be said to Jon. The sight, the voice fills with a confidence reserved for an heir, both compel him to move forward; three steps in front of Daenerys herself, his gaze fleets to roam the five of them before it is fixed on the boy.

A small gasp masks as an exhale, his right hand extending to touch, to make sure that he is not being played by his nostalgia of the past because that boy – Sansa’s firstborn is a spitting image of someone they both have loved.

The weight of the memories and his own longing for his brother put him into a trance that could only pull him closer to the boy, his heart begs for an embrace, his legs want to kneel but his mind quickly doubts that Sansa would have explained who he is to her children. He gapes at the boy, hungry for a recognition he knows will never come. Instead, it is Sansa that offers him a genuine smile, for this is a memory they both share growing up. A silent understanding that _yes, yes, he looks exactly like Robb, isn’t he? _

Tyrion is not blinded by the silent exchanges.

He bites his own tongue, knowing that it is not his place to even attempt to question the innocent memories of their shared childhood.

“…..Your Grace.” Alder addresses the visitor finally, his lack of sincerity very apparent. His voice snaps Jon back towards the presence of a threat he has failed to contain in her precious seat. He returns to his place, next to his Queen he has sworn fealty over his own family. The one he has bent his knee for.

Daenerys’s eyebrows shoot high – the disrespect is not easily missed; one she assumes has been passed down from his mother.

“My, my, a little cub who dares to roar in the presence of a dragon.” She resumes her steps, stopping short in front of the boy, suppressing the urge to caress his hair.

_Not mine. Not Aemon._ She reminds herself. Yet it does not stop her from soaking in his presence. Her heart is tender for the boy, yet her tongue is incapable of extending such affection.

“Very expected, seeing that you are raised by half a lion and a wolf.” She nods at the parents. Tyrion shifts his weight from his right leg to the other back and forth, unease with the aftereffects of this visit to his wife’s health. A quick glance to Sansa shows him beads of perspiration budding on her face in which she couldn’t wipe clear lest she brings more attention to her failing health.

He could feel her thunderous heartbeats as clear as he could hear his own.

Tyrion watches her, how she summons the coldness of the North once again, one that Tyrion has almost forgotten how it looks like. Her lips break a smile the way icy lake cracks; slow yet deadly.

She calls not for the Queen, but to her own.

“Alder, come here.”

As if trying to remind the Queen that the boy is hers. Once Alder is perched next to her seat, only then she addresses her sworn enemy.

“Welcome to Casterly Rock, Your Grace. How was the journey?”

“Delightful.” A quick response from the Queen.

_Enough with the pleasantries – _Daenerys returns Sansa’s condescending grin.

“Your lack of enthusiasm in your replies makes me worry about how you fare here.”

Thrice now, Sansa counts. Three times she is barely trying to subdue the poisonous intention that flies her here. The corner of her lips rises higher, her arms shift; pulling her daughter closer to her chest; even when she feels the thumping of her heart could have easily woken up the little angel. She watches the Queen and the glorious riding attire she is wearing – _of course, it has to match the royalty of her ride. _

“We are doing just fine your Grace, Jon Snow.” She notices Jon wiping the smile off his lips using the back of his knuckle; perhaps it warms him that she no longer refers to him with the other name. Years have passed and having Tyrion allows her to forgive Jon a little. Having Alder helps her to forgive Jon a little more. And years and years of calm happiness has allowed her to forgive Jon for good. To forget him for good and with that includes all the animosity between them. But she keeps it to herself, never reaching out for what good would that ever bring? But now, now she needs an ally to protect her children. Allies are rare, as rare as the dragon itself.

_And Jon is…. Jon. _

_Part of him is still a Stark. _

_And pack stays together, wouldn’t they? _

She could only presume to hope Jon could forgive her for the words she has hurled to him years before.

_Ahh, the audacity of a desperate mother_.

She tears her gaze away, back to the offending party of one, “Nothing important enough to have you away from the beloved throne.”

Her hand feels bare without the warmth of her husband’s touch but reaching out would signal how much she fears the Queen’s presence.

She couldn’t offer her such satisfaction.

Never.

Daenerys takes in her surroundings. From the choice of a bare hall to receive them and seeing that there is no attempt to allow her to feel at home, Daenerys knows enough that this visit is expected to be short. But a short while is all she needs to put this family in permanent unrest.

“Sansa,” the Queen moves closer, her honeyed voice is sickeningly sweet, and Sansa is clearly disgusted with it, shifting unnecessarily in her seat before she stands – her last resort to create a barrier between the two, towering over the petite Queen.

Realizing this, Daenerys parks herself just enough to have a clear view of the babe, before taking in the haughtiness that settles on Sansa’s face. She couldn’t help but address it.

“It seems pregnancy doesn’t agree with you.”

“I beg to differ. Pregnancies agree with me, the same way being childless agree with you.”

Daenerys grins: Sansa’s stark reply doesn’t sting as much as it should be. And why should it? When the speaker is clearly troubled by her mere presence.

Daenerys takes a shallow breath, peeling off the gloves clinging to her skin, buying time, stretching the torture on the poor, poor family. Her gaze is fixed on Edith’s hair, surprised to see such a color on a Lannister, and a Stark, nevertheless. She remembers Jon telling her how the eldest pack and the second take after Tully’s feature but still, the color is too far off.

If she has been the one holding the child, people would have assumed she is hers. The shade, very familiar to her own.

“Look at what we have over here. Twins! Like Jaime and Cersei?”

Sansa looks down at her, her eyebrows are sewn together as if staring exactly at the wishful thought she has moments before.

“No, like Lilith and Edith.” A gruff voice permeated with caution weighs in; it is Tyrion that supplies the answer. 

“Oh, little girls and a boy. A complete family.”

_Shame, if one is to tear it apart, wouldn’t it?_

As if egging for a far more violent reaction from Sansa, she extends her arms readily to the already distraught mother. 

“May I?” she waits for an impossible yes.

“No.” Sansa’s reply is a resounding echo. Daenerys is satisfied as she savors the hint of fear, pulling her arms away, her ego sated and now content with just peering to a blessing she is scarce of. Her gaze takes turns to roam greedily over the three little beings, taking in the distinct features of each the very same way she has marveled over her own dragons. 

“They all look so different than one another. Different than their father too.”

Alder is no stranger to comments that are meant to dispose of his father of his dignity. He is quick to growl a response. “Family, siblings do not all look the same, Your Grace. Do yours look the same all of them?”

_That boy is truly the highlight of this visit. _

She turns to the tall boy, sending an amused gaze towards Jon before she speaks.

“Why yes young lord. Especially mine, we all look almost identical. The Valyrian blood in us promised the same traits in all of us. White hair, violet eyes.” She doesn’t know why or where it comes from, but she is filled with unknown desire to search for that shade in his eyes, probably because she has seen her own shade of hair in someone else’s head.

And somehow she is glad not to find it hidden there.

She shakes herself free from the baseless suspicion.

How could a common shade of hair unnerve her in such a way?

Except that it is not common.

_Coincidence then, a glitch of fate. Aren’t the Lannister’s women are known for a light shade of hair too? _

While all kinds of thoughts run in Daenerys’s mind, Alder is furious that his argument is thwarted; he couldn’t possibly use his father’s siblings as a prime example, so he turns to the stranger he doesn’t know is truly, a family.

“How about you my lord? Do you look like your father?” Clearly he is exasperated, his expression hopeful that whatever answer he may give will support his argument towards the Queen.

Jon almost laughs but he is quick to compose himself and offer the boy the support he is looking for.

“No. Hardly.”

The boy beams with pride; his answer is now supported by the Queen’s own partner. Daenerys looks at Jon, wondering how different his path would be if the Stark in him has failed to overpower the Targaryen’s traits.

“Of course, little one. A mistaken assumption then.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. No one seems to know how to proceed. Tyrion tries to hush the little one he is holding. Daenerys couldn’t free her gaze from the one in Sansa’s embrace while Alder looks at Jon, trying to read his expression. _He doesn’t look like a threat_, Alder concludes.

Jon, in the midst of the silence, has come even closer, taking in the sight of Sansa’s little cubs; his own extension of a family should Sansa allows him to be part of it. Sansa’s cubs bear no signs of Stark – only Tully and Lannister. He wonders if such comforted her or distraught her a tad to not have any reminder of her father, Arya, of Rickon or Bran…or even himself. He takes note of how Sansa and Tyrion choose to name their children too – no lingering attachment from the past. New future for new souls.

He likes it.

Lost in the sight of a family that he has always yearned for, a figure slightly swayed steals his attention. It is Sansa. Her complexion worrying, pale, with beaded of perspirations now visible. The rise and fall of her chest are shallow and forceful as if she is gathering all the strength she has to just stand, to appear formidable failingly.

_Something is wrong…_

And he is not the only one who notices it. Tyrion has come even closer and so does Alder.

“Tyrion,” Daenerys voice breaks the silence, finally. “it is late of course, but I would like to thank you personally for the gift you have sent to me years before.”

Tyrion mumbles an answer, looking about ready to dash off the hall with all his family placed as far as possible from the threat. “My pleasure Your Grace. A gift solely made for the Queen; a soul traded for it.”

Daenerys nods at his answer. _How could one forget such an extraordinary gift? _“In return, I would like to bestow upon your children a gift too.” She fishes out a small, silk pouch from her belt, loosening the knot before shaking its content out into her waiting palm. Of a necklace of the sort, with quite a heavy-looking pendant in ivory color. She holds the pendant between her thumb and forefinger, lifting it in the air looking pleased with it before finally returning her attention to the small crowd.

“Made from Drogon’s tooth but I have to say, it is very hard to find someone as skilled as you.” Tyrion notices her smile has changed after all these years. There is absolutely no sincerity behind it and even if there is, it is chalky and hard to swallow.

“I sure hope tried my best to match the rarity of your gift.” Tyrion doubts one could ever match his gift, the same amount he doubts this is just a gift. He doubts everything when it comes to this one person he had had so much faith in before. The only thing matters now are his family.

“But I only have one – “her musing stops when she notices the one in Sansa’s embrace yawns. Her plump lips turn to the perfect shape of the moon, followed by rapid blinking of her eyes. Sansa immediately hushes her baby, pulling her closer but not before Daenerys sees the glimpses of that purple shade in her eyes.

Her heart jumps to her throat, first envy but then comes glee.

_A Targaryen. _

“What a lovely color you have there little…?” her question hanging as she offers her finger to the little one.

“Edith.” Sansa’s voice cracks. She hopes Daenerys does not think much of Edith’s features. But as she hopes, it is as if she could see the wheels turning in the Queen’s head.

_She knows._

_She knows!_

“Well Edith, I do believe this gift suits you best.” Daenerys places the necklace on Edith’s chest and Sansa doesn’t need to see the details to know what it means.

The necklace is as good as a noose.

She sees only the redness of a dragon’s fire before her vision turns black.

\-----------

When Sansa falls, everyone reacts.

Daenerys immediately grabs Edith.

Tyrion rushes forward, one hand grabbing Lilith tighter while the other pushes Alder to the side.

Yet his head turns to Jon, pleading for help.

Jon has already sprung forward, catching Sansa before she falls to the floor.

They run. And in the midst of the chaos, Tyrion sends a glance to Alder, to stay with Edith. To protect his sister.

\---------------

“She is sick. What is happening to her?!” Jon places Sansa on her bed while Tyrion has been barking orders nonstop to the servants to call for healers.

“Edith…” with trembling lips, Sansa calls out for her daughter. Tyrion climbs on the bed, placing the squirming Lilith next to his wife hoping that that is enough to calm her.

A basin is placed next to him and he orders his guards, servants, all of them to stay where Alder is, where Edith is before he deftly soaks the cloth, wrings it before patting it on Sansa’s face. There are moments where he curses the state he is born with but as of this moment, never has he loathed it more that he has to rely on another to carry his own wife. Of Jon of all people. Through gritted teeth, he tries to ignore how he despises the way Jon’s shadow falls onto Sansa. But he has to explain, or he will not stop breathing down his neck.

“The labour…you know how it is, you and I of all people should know better.”

“What can we do for her?” the urgency in Jon’s voice irks Tyrion.

_Who are you….?_

He snaps, flinging the cloth into the basin, knocking it down with a loud clang on the floor. Lilith cries. Sansa groans. And Tyrion barks his frustration at Jon.

“You think I am not trying my darndest here?! It’s your Queen!” his breathing heavy from the pressure within, staring at Jon wishing that he is not here, wishing that this is all just a nightmare. As they stare down at one another, the healer finally arrived, and Tyrion moves, collecting Lilith in his arms before he passes her to her wet nurse.

Tyrion rubs his face with his palms, looking at his wife before he nudges Jon to follow him to his solar.

Jon sends one last look towards Sansa before he follows Tyrion’s steps. He closes the door behind him and immediately the other speaks.

“What is she doing here?” Tyrion asks Jon. His tone mellows down, fairly embarrassed at losing his grip over his own emotions.

Jon simply sends him a look. This is not a question to be entertained when the answer is obvious. His right hand rises midway, waving an empty explanation.

Tyrion looks down, his fingers digging a hole in his palm, trying to craft a way out from this sudden attention from the Queen in which has been laid dormant for years before.

“You and I, we promise to protect her.” His voice is almost inaudible, reticent that he needs more than himself to protect her. The day he sent a gift to Daenerys, he has sent a message to Jon, offering his help to be a quiet Hand to Jon who is green in ruling despite having what it takes to assume the responsibilities.

Jon has agreed to such an arrangement.

“I’ve stopped countless attempts to murder her.” Jon tries to reason with Tyrion, that yes, he has honored his pledge. But there are things that he couldn’t blatantly deny Daenerys. She is volatile and appeasing her is essential in ensuring peace.

She is the only one that could control Drogon. 

“So did I!” Tyrion yells. It is too easy to slip into anger when his mind spells only chaos; the safety of his children, his wife, and the realms and its peace can go fuck itself when his very world is collapsing when there is a real threat in his own house vying for what he and Sansa have carefully built over the years.

Stones, bricks that the two of them have laid meticulously together now turns fragile, as feeble as that sandcastle Alder has built on that beach months ago. Collecting his thoughts, his fingers all pressed against his forehead before he pulls each closer, palm against palm, trying to assure Jon of the same conclusion he has deduced moons ago.

“I am asking you to end her,” each word he enunciates slowly with great effort in restraining his desperation. “I am asking you to listen to me. People do not care for her. I, Tyrion Lannister, I, am adept in reading political shifts and they are all, those who could make changes, they are all rallying behind you! End her! She’s a mere symbol now. She could die today, and people won’t stop to mourn her the next day!”

Tyrion looks at Jon earnestly. But looking at the way he stands, hands behind him, lips turned to a straight, grim line he knows his answer already.

The only thing between Daenerys and her death is Jon.

“We don’t know that Tyrion. It is too risky.” Jon shakes his head as if his answer is not a clear enough rejection to the idea Tyrion has hinted again and again for him to claim what has always belonged to him.

“Don’t tell me you still love her.” Tyrion scoffs at the ridiculousness of the notion. Moments pass between them and Tyrion steps closer, challenging Jon,

“Don’t tell me it is even love to begin with.”

Jon’s gaze flashes a fit of clear anger behind the presumptuous assumption lying behind Tyrion’s words. Taken aback at how he jabs on something he himself has never put a clear conclusion to it, he responds swiftly.

“Are you appealing to feelings I harbor towards Sansa? Towards your own wife?” hoping that Tyrion himself would see how inappropriate the argument he is using to convince him to murder Daenerys.

But Tyrion won’t budge. No regret or even attempts to take back his words.

As if he knows everything.

_Perhaps he does. _

“I am appealing to whatever it takes to protect her.”

_Fair enough. _Before he could process and filter his thought, the words simply spill freely, filling the room with the darkest shade of selfishness he has never thought he is capable of,

“If I ask you, to give her to me, would you comply?”

The second he finishes the question he wishes he could take it back, yet Tyrion has already begun to consider his proposition.

Tyrion looks as if he is digging a wound in his palm, the way his fingers claw against his skin.

Silence. Taut between the two until Tyrion decides on an answer.

“You can ask her after you have done what is expected out of you.”

Jon looks down to the floor, one foot kicking the air just because -

_It is not enough_.

Jon knows the answer already. They both, Sansa and himself have long known the answer to it – they could never, ever move past the betrayal. Perhaps it is envy that hooks out such impossible inquisition from him. Jealousy, that Sansa is living out his simple dream of having a family while he is left with such a bitter taste of loneliness amplified with each of his accomplishments. 

Tyrion marches towards the door, wanting to leave the solar, to leave Jon alone, in hope that in the brief solitude, he will consider eliminating his Queen. Yet he pauses in front of the wooden door, taking a deep breath, he reminds himself of what he is very sure of. Of the one thing, he has doubt years back but never again.

Without as much as turning back to face Jon, he speaks what he is very certain of,

“You may ask, but I know she will choose me.”

\-------------

When the Queen and Jon finally decide to leave, Tyrion and Alder send them off towards her mighty Drogon – the little one couldn’t contain his awe at such sight. Sitting on the beast, Jon behind her, she addresses Alder one last time,

“You are right little one when I carefully consider it, it dawns on me that perhaps my siblings do not all look alike.”

A knowing smile sent towards Tyrion.

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everybody is in good health. Take care and I hope we can survive this together. 
> 
> It has been a while, and it is always like this when the story is about to come to an end. I worry a lot so I procrastinate. For example; my other unfinished works. 
> 
> I somehow like to clarify that my stories revolve around feelings, emotions drive every decision so yeah... I wouldn't go behind the political moves because I really need to read more in order to do that and I am not convinced that I am there,   
yet.
> 
> So hopefully this is good enough for now. Thank you for reading. Thank you so much, my precious readers.


	24. Of Lions, Wolves and Dragons (Part 3)

“I do not accept that!” Tyrion’s voice is intense despite the effort to curb its’ volume. Sansa is resting and he would have hated to be the reason she has to wake up from her slumber. He is speaking to the most trusted healer on the land and he is not convinced with the prognosis he is offered.

The old healer inhales a deep breath; this situation is too familiar by now. A husband rankled by the possibility of losing his wife. The younger him would have offered prescriptions even going as far as suggesting for a different healer but the old him, the wiser him that has seen too much knows now when death is hovering.

Softening the blow would not help.

“My lord, it is what it is. I’ve seen how pregnancies affect a woman’s health but rarely to this degree. She could have a condition that she is born with, but perchance it never affects her until the pregnancies aggravate her health further.”

He has only heard of Sansa Stark. How could he know more when he has always been on this side of the sea? He only knows her as the beautiful lady that has loved the belittled lord, has loved her people even when she is hailed from the cold distance; she has only offered warmth to her people and to see such lady claimed by death so soon?

It is indeed hard to understand fate at times.

“Her heart has weakened.” He concludes it, explaining it to the lord whose gaze is fixed through his own, straight through his eyes as if his head is offering a different answer.

Anger is apparent immediately.

“She’s not weak. My wife is everything but weak.” How could someone use that spiteful word to describe Sansa? _No, no._

“My apologies my lord. I am not saying that she is. But a heart can only take so much. Has she led an easy paced life before?” He has, of course, heard few stories too, about how she has been betrothed to the lord’s nephew and the stories about the nephew are never pleasant. He waits as the lord turns to his wife, perhaps revisiting all that he knows about the life she has led, and the purse of his lips tells him all about it.

“I am going to assume no.” the healer’s voice is calm and collected. Tyrion would have appreciated it if morose tinges his inflection but no, this death is the same as the rest. Nothing new, nothing less. 

_How could the loss of Sansa mean nothing? The whole world should grieve..._

“I couldn’t just stand and watch her….” _die_. He couldn’t say it. A crack in his voice as he continues, “There must be something I can do?”

After anger comes bargaining and now the lord has seemed to begin accepting. “If you could make sure she feels at ease, that could perhaps buy her some time.” Of all people, Lord Tyrion is the one with the means to offer such to his wife. He spares the defeated husband one last look before taking his leave.

Losing someone is never easy.

“Forgive me, my lord. We all know how much you cherish your wife.”

\----------

Sansa turns her head just enough that her tears will flow straight unto the pillowcase. Listening to Tyrion trying to argue on something he could not stop is harrowing on its own, at par with learning that her days are numbered.

She survives Joffrey, Ramsay, Daenerys even…

She survives losing almost everyone in her family…

But she couldn’t survive this?

_How is that fair? _

She is glad that her chamber is empty now, that Tyrion is sending off the healer himself. The need to be alone with the things she has learned is overwhelming. She turns to her side, and it feels wrong. She lies on her back, perfectly still and it still feels off. Thoughts running in her mind and she couldn’t catch any, couldn’t hold on to any-

Her palms, one on top of the other are pressed against her chest, feeling the beats of her heart. The firmness of each thump, thudding through her ribs, her flesh, her skin, straight to her palm.

Strong and unyielding.

_Isn’t this enough? _

She has, on her own survived so much…is it only doable because back then she truly believes she is fighting for herself? for those who have past, never to return home? But she has been greedy, isn’t she? The audacity to have more than what is rationed for her, for her heart to extend its existence outside of her body, in the form of her husband and now three little darlings…

Very little is left for her.

The rush of blood unto her face is hard to ignore. The thickness of the heat behind her eyes, hot enough for the tears to spill. Her throat constricts, leaving very little room for her to breathe. Her whole body is betraying her composure – _cry just cry, there is no need to be strong now._

She could feel her heartbeats quicken and she curls her fingers, forming a ball, thumping it hard against her numbered heartbeats.

_Don’t stop…. don’t stop…_

Her legs are crossed, and she hunches, right hand still mauling her own chest, hitting it hard, sending a warning to her heart to remember to beat.

“You…. you heard?”

It is his voice that smashes the feeble hold she has over her tears. She moans, the pain of leaving so soon is entrenched deep into her soul and she could not even begin to comprehend it.

“Don’t worry Sansa. I won’t allow it.” He climbs the bed, kneeling in front of his wife, trying his best to stop her tears.

He fails.

It brings a new wave of tears that empty promises he could never keep. She pulls him hard, bringing him on top of her body; she needs to feel all of him against herself. She needs him to be the weight that holds her presence in this realm. She needs him to calm her down when she is set to lose everything, any moment now.

Through her sobs, his hands find her face, wiping her tears – a futile thing to do when her body is set to drown them both in it.

And his tears fall too.

His palms against her cheeks and her hands mirror the same onto his face, their foreheads touch and they relieve their steep pain together, no point in pretending to be optimistic when the sky is this gloom and the clouds are heavy with poisonous rain.

Once the tears subside, Tyrion finds himself listening to his wife’s heartbeats, counting and wondering how much is left all while being rocked by his wife. Sansa pulls his curls gently, a kiss placed onto his forehead every now and then. Their tears dry now, and Tyrion waits for her to speak first.

“Tell me Tyrion, a vain dream of yours…” her voice is chapped from all the tears and it comes out as whisper meant only for him.

He plays with her hair, realizing that she has cried enough tears for her own and now she wants to forget it, without addressing the issue any further. He could respect that, should respect that because he himself couldn’t bear to speak of the matter again.

“Vain, how?” he mulls over all his dreams made possible after her presence. Nothing is vain when all that he has thought impossible has indeed come true.

The hanging silence demands to be excused and Sansa is quick to do so. “You want me to go first?”

He nods.

“I dream of introducing you to my parents.” A shy smile takes place.

Tyrion could not help but snickers at the vision conjured by his mind. “I highly doubt your parents would approve.”

“It would have been entertaining.”

“What is?”

“You, winning their approval.” Her hands roam on his shoulder, stopping at his neck while playing with his ears.

A kiss on each palm before he speaks, “Oh, you are too cruel Sansa.”

She nods, grinning before she speaks. “Tell me yours then?”

He pretends to be lost in his thoughts. She wants to know his most vain little dream? He will gladly share it with her.

“I want to be in a world where I am at least a handspan taller than you.”

“A handspan only?”

“You are really, excruciatingly tall Sansa. It is impossible to steal a kiss from you.”

_What a simple dream..._

“Why steal when you could simply ask?”

Lips pressed against the other, tasting the saltiness tears are known to bring. 

\--------------

_For death is death. Whether it is sudden or foreseen, grief will always follow after. For the latter, it blooms even before the permanent parting takes place. Perhaps such is why it is much bitter? To just wait for the end of a completed book, no longer with it comes continuity._

_How awful…_

_How inevitable…_

\--------------

“Tell me now. What exactly you plan to do to Sansa and her children?” Jon is losing his patience; waiting and anticipating any plans of hers he could have foiled. But none takes form and it disturbs him even more so this calmness he couldn’t recognize when it is sourced back to Daenerys Targaryen – a known clumsy, impatient player.

Her grin is very telling; a plan has indeed taken its roots, but she is not putting it into motion just yet. “Pray tell what you mean by that?”

“You look at the children and you light up. We return home and you stop badgering me about heirs.”

It is amusing seeing Jon in such a state. Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. “Have I done anything after the visit?”

“Nothing. Which is very unlike you.”

A peal of laughter escapes her lips.

“Haven’t you heard what your sweet, sweet cousin said to me?” She raises one eyebrow to him, watching him recalling the memory. 

“Being childless suits me and I agree with her.” She is done with this interrogation and she turns her attention towards her book she is reading before he barges in. Flipping through the pages, she realizes that Jon is still there, boring a hole perhaps into her skull.

“I don’t trust you.”

“Since when you ever do?”

\----------

When the girls are two, Sansa finally learns what secret lies behind Lilith’s eyes.

Sansa has made it this far, therefore it is only natural for her to doubt what the last healer has said regarding her health condition. She does not get any stronger, but her health does not deteriorate further. She has high hopes that she could be with her family even longer, but such a dream is buried deep on that very evening she has spent with her daughters.

Playing with her daughters takes a toll on her and Tyrion has been very adamant in reminding her to be mindful of her health, so she sits quietly, next to the girls who are now occupied with their dolls and little dire wolves and lions Tyrion has very recently finished carving himself. There are six dire wolves – all painted with the exact shades as the ones roaming Winterfell once upon a time. She scoots closer to her bed, pressing her back against the wooden frame for support. Alder and Tyrion are away – Tyrion has now begun to include Alder in councils, familiarizing him with the responsibilities of a lord. But they will always rush back to her, that is a habit by now, one that is impossible to change.

She picks the book she has been reading for her daughters, the same book Tyrion has read for her when her nightmares are intense. They come back. All of them now that her mind is ghosted by Daenerys and death. She flips through the pages, hoping she could finish reading all of them to her daughters.

That is when she hears it.

“Kerrob!” Lilith is laughing, repeating the word nonstop.

Sansa places the book on her lap, observing her daughter clapping her hands, so giddy playing on her own while Edith is sitting far from her, pulling her doll’s arms making it prance around as if it is dancing.

_That’s odd. _

She crawls closer towards Lilith, vying for her attention when her gaze is still fixed on someone, something which is not there yet has managed to captivate her.

“Kerrob!” she repeats the word again.

“What is it, Lilith? Who are you playing with?”

Lilith laughs before she picks up the wooden dire wolf that looks like the one that once belonged to Robb.

_Kerrob…. Uncle Robb? _

Sansa searches through her memories, trying to remember if she has ever mentioned her sibling’s names to the little girls. Alder knows, she has made sure he learns everything about the Stark in him. But the girls – she has only mentioned their names in passing.

Did she?

“Lilith….” Sansa calls her daughter again. Her gaze is still fixed to the empty space in front of her. She holds the little one’s arm, sending a glance to the nothingness before she pulls Lilith into her embrace. Her chubby fingers holding tight to the wooden dire wolf and Sansa decides to ask her something she is sure Lilith would have no way in knowing the exact answer.

“Lilith, what is its’ name?”

She couldn’t possibly know, could she? Two is too young to remember much. And these wooden wolves are very new to the girls, not named yet. 

Lilith tilts her head to one side as if she is listening for an answer. 

“Weywind!”

Sansa freezes. And in that fleeting moment, she swears she hears that familiar chuckles. 

There is this old belief in the North, that a hundred days before one’s death, a beloved deceased member would come and visit the soon to be dead.

_Oh Robb, are you here for me? _

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, ok. I'm sorry. But, it is what it is. I try, but it keeps coming back to this. I don't know why.


	25. A Simple End

_ A Much-Needed Closure. _

“I miss the cold. I miss snow.” She weeps to no one, this impossible dream she could never experience again. What begins as a mundane fever spirals into chains that tie her to her bed, forced to watch the numbered sunrises through the windows.

Tyrion, desperate he is, begs the only Snow he knows, informing him of the impending end befallen onto his cousin and if he could be kind enough to visit for the last time.

As he enters the room, Sansa could not contain her bewilderment at the sight. She stares at Tyrion, who has left the chamber leaving her with _him._

He slips off his black cloak, placing it on the armrest of the chair before sitting next to her bed, a certain sadness envelops his presence and she wonders if it is meant for her. 

“Jon... you look so tired.”

His back is pressed firmly against the back of his chair, his eyes avert her gaze. His lips twitch before he hunches, finally dragging his gaze to meet hers. 

“Do you resent me still?”

Sansa braves a smile, realizing how much time they have both wasted as they cling towards their old resentment towards one another. They have fought together, side by side and with her end coming close, perhaps this is the best time to forgive and be freed from such a burden.

“That was long ago. I learn to stop. You?”

A solemn smile grips his lips, relieved to be forgiven and it births a wave of fresh courage to confess to her the things he has kept to himself. “I am tired and lonely.” His voice wavers, doubting whether he should proceed but he has nothing to lose anymore. “At times I wonder what you mean when you said you have loved me in ways you don’t understand… I wonder if I could have been Alder, Lilith and Edith’s father.”

She should have been seething with anger. How inappropriate such a wish is! But she could only afford pity. A whole lot of them for this one man who wishes for something so simple and yet granted with the opposite. 

“They are mine and Tyrion’s Jon. They could never be yours. Never could be ours.”

“You settled with him.” his bitterness leaks unbounded.

Sansa understands why it is too easy to assume such. That Tyrion is what he is now to her simply because she is too used to his presence. But she knows him, adores him, loves him. She misses him even when he is inches away from her, seeks him even when she could feel his presence next to her. Tyrion is the calm she never thought she could have, the calm that burns even brighter than the passion the childish her swoons after. Tyrion is the love far from the ones they sing in ballads but the one they should have sung about.

There is no need to convince others with the ways she has loved her heart. So, to Jon, she simply replies, “Fate sends me to him twice. I think I ought to derive meaning from it.”

Her labored breaths force a stop to their conversation. Jon couldn’t bear to see her like this, couldn’t fathom that this goodbye would be final. He shouldn’t be here. Her husband should be with her. Her truest family should be with her, not him.

Biting the inside of his cheeks, he stands, his own hands shaking as he picks up his old, black cloak. He wants to kiss her forehead, but he has lost that right the day he chooses to side with the other.

“Jon…” she croaks out as he is about to leave.

He turns swiftly, closing the distance between them. For a moment she just stares at him, swallowing her doubts, the irrationality of wishing for something Jon has failed to deliver once.

She looks at him, her vision clouded with tears as she condenses all her hopes and fears; everything into two words. “My children…”

Her fears cloak him with a new purpose. Jon understands, even with a mere two words strung together, he understands. Her trusting him to protect her children is the ultimate form of forgiveness he could be bestowed with.

He would not fail twice. 

He bends his knee, taking a new oath, gladly. 

“I will protect them. I promise.”

\----------

_ An Unexpected Reunion. _

He leaves her chamber to be greeted with an empty hallway to which he allows himself to crumble. His right palm placed against the door, oh how he wishes he could have held her hands in his and be there till the end. Knowing that he himself has dashed that hope, he couldn’t bear the regrets and anger from rising together with the grief of losing someone dear. It overwhelms him and he needs to be away. Now.

Placing his treasured gift back on his shoulder – the only remnant of a peaceful period between them, he squares his shoulder, ready to take his leave, perhaps if he is lucky he could catch a glimpse of his nephew and nieces.

He wonders if Tyrion would allow it.

“What are you doing here?”

That very voice stops him from taking another step forward. He could not believe it. Years have gone and he has accepted that he will no longer be in the presence of other Starks.

And yet, now, when one is dying, another appears so suddenly. He turns, readying himself to see perhaps an apparition, his own senses playing games as he mourns an approaching loss.

He sees her and he immediately is convinced that she is real. Her features have sharpened with the passing years, yet the hollow in her eyes remains the same since he last sees her back in Winterfell.

“Arya…” the needs to hold her, to be assured that she is truly here, how much he has missed her- this one person that he knows would always welcome his presence overpowers this menacing whisper that questions the fighting stance she is wearing when she is facing her favorite brother.

Another, just one more step before he could simply pull her into an embrace and she immediately takes another step back, shielding a little boy from his gaze while the other pulling a dagger, its blade shiny and threatening. 

“Don’t. Take one more step and I will carve you.”

Perplexed, he simply breathes out, “Why?

“You disappoint me, Jon. Who would have thought that you have it in you?”

“What do you mean?”

Arya clicks her tongue, a sign of disapproval. Returning her blade back to its sheathe, she walks past him, not bothering to return his stare as she stands in front of the door that separates her and her sister.

“Don’t count on me to list your sins. I will see you in Hell Jon. Go back to your Queen.”

She disappears behind the door, leaving him to wallow in the brutality of their reunion but not before he hears the word she has used to describe him.

“Who is that Mother?” a young voice said.

“A traitor.”

The blade would have hurt him much less.

\----------

Surrounded by her husband and her children, Sansa realizes that this is the end many would have yearned for and many have been denied of. Her family members have too elaborated an ending for each, and she begins to believe that she is the luckiest one so far. Not quite that old but has had a taste of peace and the beauty of being loved and cherished.

Alder is sleeping next to her; too tired he is from spending his day with a cousin a year younger than himself - Robb Torrhen Stark. Sansa would have never dared to assume that Arya has left her in search of a man, yet she did exactly that, finding her own happiness with Gendry and Sansa is relieved somehow. Lilith squeezes herself between her mother and her brother while Edith is snoring, mouth half-opened, her head against her mother’s thigh, basking in the warmth she would soon be deprived of.

“When I said I miss snow I mean the white fluff coming from the sky sweetheart. The North. I miss my home. Not him.” Sansa speaks to her husband who is lying next to her, his hand placed over her heart.

“I was not thinking through.” He doubts no more, he simply dreads her end and he scrambles for anything, even when it makes no sense. 

“Do you doubt me?”

He shushes her, not wanting her to strain herself. 

“Since when do you think I love you?” Sansa could feel that her end is too near now, tries as she might postpone it with a conversation.

“Since the day you stop covering your face with a pillow.”

“You regret it didn’t you? Sleep sure comes sparsely what with my constant lullabies.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to it. We will get through this. You will be healthy and strong again.”

“I will, wouldn’t I? I have you, the smartest man of Westeros.” The lie is easy to be uttered because it is not for him. It is for her. She looks at her children with love bleeding from her very being thinking about how she would never be there when Alder finds his love, never will she be present to stitch her daughters’ wedding dresses. Never will she see with her own very eyes the things they are capable of achieving.

“Will the children remember much of me…?”

Tyrion hides his tears against the nook of her neck, his breathing shakier with each stretched of time.

“I’ll remind them every day, with every breath of mine.”

She combs through her mind, things that she would have wanted him to remember so she could leave him with a balm she knows will never be enough to fill the void her passing would create.

She settles with the simplest reminder.

“I, Sansa, choose you, Tyrion.”

“Remember that.”

12 years after accepting his cloak the second time, she bids him a final farewell. 

_\----------_

Looking down at her dead sister, Arya silences a cry that begs to escape her lips. Death is nothing new. It is as old as time. She has her own fair share in claiming lives yet seeing Sansa likes this enlightened her with the rawness of the pain losing a family member. It is not new, yet it hurts the same.

She drinks in the sight of her sister’s pale skin, very few wrinkles on it. She seems at peace and if she tricks herself enough, she could see her sister almost smiling in her death.

Playing back their last conversation in her mind, she traces the length of her sister’s nose, her thumb rubbing against her cold lips.

_Do you still wear faces? _

_When it is necessary. _

_Bring a piece of me home, will you? _

She realizes it means more. It means it is now her turn to win their home back.

\-------------

_ The Final Push. _

“Dying is she not?”

Jon has just reached his chamber, the one he does not share with anyone. Pain is not foreign but this time around it weighs him down, pushing him to bend his knees, aching him, a constant hum in his ears he could not rid of. With Daenerys barging in, looking giddy with the possibility of the death of her enemy, Jon turns restless, his fingers twitching against his own dagger.

He wants to bury himself deep in his pain, to wallow in solitude but Daenerys has not the ability to respect that. 

She takes his silence as a confirmation, an answer to her question.

“Good. I have been delaying this as a sign of respect but since the children are about to be motherless, I would extend my benevolence as Queen by taking them under my care.”

The way she speaks, it irks him.

The way she breathes riles him. 

“I adore Edith. I am thinking of naming her as my heir.” 

And her words boil him with seething rage.

“Enough…... Stop taking what is not meant to be yours….” He looks down to the ground, growling, collecting his thoughts as he runs his fingers against his own curls, yanking hard. He swears if he as much looks at her for a second longer he would have snapped her tiny little neck.

It does not sit well with her, this reaction he is offering.

“I am the Queen, Aegon. Everything is mine for the taking.”

_So proud, so entitled. _

The twitch turns to firm hold and he urges the blade through Daenerys’s royal garments, deeper through her skin, further until the tip touches her heart, their faces so close he could feel her hot stunted breaths against his skin.

He stares at her shocked gaze with deep-rooted loathing, spitting out the words he has always keep to himself, 

“Stop taking her family from her.”

\------------

It takes Jon 12 years to heed Sansa’s advice. And Tyrion is right, no one mourns her.

How foolish has he been? What kind of sentiment has held back his blade for far too long?

\--------------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a good place to end it, no? 
> 
> I am sorry.


	26. Welcome Home

_ Welcome Home _

_When Sansa left, he doesn’t feel that void people keep saying they feel when they lost their loved ones. Instead, he feels cold. Not the kind of cold the North is partial of; it is more cunning, a much more permanent winter that never thaws, enveloping every bit of him, that holds his bones in its icy claws, threatening to shatter the small frame that holds the meat that makes him, him. The kind of cold that lingers in his breath making it shallow and never fulfilling. _

_A significant parting gift indeed, cold, too close to the sea. Cold, when the sun is too generous with its heat. _

_Not void, no. _

_Just cold. _

_With each day passing, with each presence faded, he clings to it, nurtures it, feeding it the way one feeds the fire through the dark night, breathing life into it simply because it reminds him of her. He grasps onto it, never letting go because the cold is her and he will never let her disappear. _

_Not again. _

_But with time, it fades just as well. Not all at once but fade still. With each smile growing persistently on their children’s lips, with each inch they gain, with each achievement they have rightfully earned - they melt the cold, almost always making it slips away for good. He gathers it all, centering its presence between the folds of his heart thus he is filled with a memento of her close to his beating heart._

_Not void, no. _

_Just cold. _

_\----------_

_ The Kingsroad, 12 years after Sansa’s death. _

“Do you still see the lady in red?” They are inside a carriage the three of them, Tyrion and his daughters, heading far from home to their other home, one that has never truly be seen by the two except for stories told by their father, faithful he has been in ensuring they know the very essence that makeup who they are as a person. Wolves and lionesses they are, a combination their father has always revealed as unthinkable yet happens anyway.

Arya has won Winterfell back.

Somehow.

He knows not how. What he did know is, come one fine day a raven brought a message to the King; _Arya Stark has claimed Winterfell._

Life continues per usual after, _how different it is now compared to the days of wars!_ and now they are on their way there, a pilgrimage of sort for the family.

Lilith stops the conversation she is having with her sister, tries her best to answer her father. It is fairly new this knowledge for him, offering him quite a scare once she divulges it. A lot has to be said to convince him and once he is convinced, he stops asking questions.

“From time to time, yes. But ghosts they do not stay long at one place Father; I assume they have other places to be too. They are just here to visit.”

_Have you seen them all child? All my dead family members? Did you see your Grandfather with an arrow piercing through his body? See your Aunt and Uncle dead side by side? Did they whisper to you their twisted truth?_

Tyrion raises his face to see both of his daughters sitting next to one another - the anchor he holds tight to get through life after her death. Lilith carries with her a Lannister beauty people claimed had once belonged to his mother. He has doubts but quite possible there is some truth to it. A soft, still shy charm she holds, that only waits for the right moment to bloom even a greater beauty.

Looking at them, his thoughts immediately go to Alder, he hopes beyond hopes that death will simply let him be. To only claim him when he is a hundred years old just so he could see more of his children. 

Edith reminds him of Sansa. Yes, white hair, violet eyes should have reminded him of the dead Queen but the way she smiles is just like her mother - warm and gentle when she is with family, yet a beauty turns ice towards strangers. 

He would not be surprised should the North hail her as the ice deity in their old lore’s. That, or they would dismiss her should her appearance reminds them too much of the Mother of Dragons.

He hopes not for the latter.

Reeling his thoughts back to the issue at hand, he simply said, “She visits you a little too much.”

“I am the only one who can see her.” She looks down to her palm, her fingers tracing the lines on it. “Even if she is visiting others I still am the only one who could see her.” It is true. The lady in red hovers behind everyone. Alder, when he is still home, before he begins his journey so far nobody knows exactly where he is. Edith, whenever she buries her nose into all the books in Casterly Rock. She is even there in her father’s solar, filling in the emptiness of the seat so close to his.

As if she belongs there somehow.

“It’s alright Father. I don’t mind. She is…” a slight pause for she is thinking of the times she has wondered if the ghost is her mother before she casts that thought aside, _it simply couldn’t be!_ _not like that._

“…how do I say this, a welcome visitor? One that I don’t mind seeing. It’s seeing new ghosts that bothers me.”

“How could you be so calm?” the exasperated look on his face is quite comical but she dares not laugh at the sincere concern he is blatantly displaying. 

“Well, what other choice do I have?”

Silence blankets the three of them as they sway with the movements of the carriage.

Edith begins to hum a lullaby her father has told them the same one their mother had sung for them. The two listen to the soft hum transforms into a sweet song. Tyrion decides to halt his reading, the motions only invites severe headache the more he tries to focus. There will be ample time to review the King’s new decree – a quiet Hand he has been to him all these whiles. His children know him as Uncle Jon, even when Arya disapproves of it. Tyrion has no qualms to have him involved in his children’s lives; he has earned the right to do so the moment he kills her.

And truth to be told, Jon could never be more than just Uncle Jon to his children.

_Sansa…_

The cold returns and he closes his eyes, painting a vision of her behind his eyelids, imagining that she is next to him, singing a duet with Edith.

“Ask away Father. Ask me the one thing I know you want too.”

He sighs before he asks the question he has been dying to know its answer. “Have you…” he steals another breath, his gaze unsure but he continues. “Have you seen your Mother?”

Lilith would want the same – to see the familiar face of her mother. If she were to see her, she would have recognized her in a heartbeat. How could she not when Father has had dozens of her portraits painted and hung on the walls of Casterly Rock? 

“No. It’s always the lady in red. She’s not her.”

Tyrion deflates, a defeated smile plastered on his face.

_Oh, futile hope, why couldn’t you stay wilted? _

She throws her gaze outside, a wistful look on her face. “Long red hair, a beautiful red dress, flowers scattered all over it.”

Remembering the favor she has asked from her sister, she turns too quick, startling Edith from her song.

“Edith, have you finished the drawing?” She is eager. Edith has drawn all of them. All souls she has seen lurking in the castle, all drawn before they both seek to name them, seek the story behind their deaths for the dead, they are not eager to share their secrets.

The white-haired lady in the making smiles at her sister’s enthusiasm, all while pulling to her lap a book; she is very similar to Tyrion, books at hands, always. Flipping through the pages, in which most have parchments filled with drawings tuck safely in the holds of the words, her finger slides gently in between the pages, her gaze has finally caught what she is looking for.

“I have. I must say, what you lack in drawing you make up in giving acute descriptions.”

“Show me!”

Drawing exchanges hands and Lilith stares at it, marveling how her sister has managed to capture her rambles into a vision that is simply the truth. Edith has everything drawn so precise, as if she has peaked inside her mind, sifting through the dead’s faces she has seen until she finds the one she is looking for. The lady in red looks so graceful, and Edith, clever she is, has drawn it in a way that shadow falls unto her face, hiding her most frightful feature, making it so easy to assume that this could have been a portrait of a beautiful maiden fit just right in tales told repeatedly from one generation to the other.

“Ahh, isn’t she a sight for sore eyes.”

She continues to admire it for quite a while before she breathes out what she has kept as secret only known between herself and her sister.

“It’s a shame she doesn’t have a face.”

At such a description, Tyrion’s curiosity is piqued once more. “Lilith, a faceless ghost?” And his worries manifold even more. He has been quick to assume these ghosts are non-too ghastly looking which would have explained how laidback Lilith has been seeing them all amongst the living.

A chuckle, gaze still planted on the drawing as she replies, “It’s alright Father. With her it’s different.”

“Her presence feels familiar.”

She tucks the drawing back between the pages and silence once again blankets them.

\----------

When his daughters are huddled together, sleeping soundly, rocked by the rough sway of the carriage, gently, he pries the book from Edith’s lap, bringing it to his. He flips through it, every once in a while he stops, admiring her attention to details when it comes to her drawings. Her hands always tainted with colors or the blackness of the coal. Turning to a new page, one of her many drawings falls to his side.

He glances at it for he is still occupied with another drawing of hers – a replication of one of the many portraits of their mother. 

A forlorn sigh as he realizes how terrible it must have been to miss someone when you barely have enough memories with them.

The fallen drawing moves, teetering at the edge of his seat. Just before the fall, he catches it, knowing how well Edith treasures each of her work it would be dangerous for him to allow one missing from the rest. He brings it closer, ready to place it back where it belongs.

He flips it without thinking and immediately he is drawn to it, so familiar it is this image he has had imprinted on his mind from the first time his gaze has fallen unto it.

_The Lady in Red. _

The evening dress in Lannister’s color, flowers flourishing its length. That bold redness, that very severe shade of red, _a fiery beauty!_

He needs not to see the face to recognize his own wife.

It is her.

A suppressed gasp as emotions run wild. A blazing cold subdues his thoughts.

_So why? _

_Why are you faceless? _

\----------

When Sansa asked for a piece of her to be brought home, just after she had asked whether or not she is still wearing faces, Arya knows exactly what needs to be done. Her arduous list has long been forsaken and now she is bestowed with a new list.

_Skin Sansa’s face._

_Win Winterfell._

_Bring her home._

So, she did what her list consists of. Each of it. Except for the last because she knows not how best to honour it.

Sansa observes customs very dear to her heart. A true Lady of Winterfell. By law, she is not to be buried in the crypt. She is married, she belongs to her husband’s family, wherever they reside that should have been her final resting place.

But she asked for this.

Long she keeps her sister’s face, holding it, staring at it. Half hoping the eyelids open and reveals once again that clear irises, wishing those lips parted and says exactly this,

_Well done my sister…_

It was uncalled for the first time she wears it. The face in her hands and she simply put it on, seeing herself changes and become her very own sister.

_I wonder what it would feel like, to wear those pretty dresses, to be the Lady of Winterfell._

She stares hard at_ her_ reflection, and tears, a very foreign reaction that belongs to neither of them falls down her sister’s cheeks.

After that night, she does it every full moon. She wears her sister’s face, her dresses, her cloak, and roams the castle as her ghost.

For if she truly wishes to honour her memories, she could never do it alone; the people should remember her, Winterfell should remember her.

That way, her sister will continue to live. Somehow.

\----------

“You could fool my sisters, but you can’t fool me.” A voice echoes from the shadow. She turns, and she waits, for the owner to come forward and reveals himself.

_Alder._ Grown, looking so similar to Robb but with a slender built, and movements that mirror a cat, not wolves after his mother, nor lion after his father.

Once he is bathed with the moonlight, she offers him a warm smile that belongs to her, not her sister. “And why is that?”

“You don’t walk like her. You don’t stand like her. You are simply not her.”

Arya nods. She agrees. She could try her best, but she could never play Sansa right. “Is that an observation from a devoted son or from one faceless man to another?”

“Both.” A childish grin, one that she recognizes emerges on his lips.

“You survive the training.” A quite remark from Arya.

“I’m a slow learner but I learn.”

“Your Mother said the exact words once.”

They keep the distance between them. Alder’s eyes never betraying her gaze.

“Did all the biddings?” she asks. “Killing with no questions asked?”

He rubs his chin, looking down as if thinking. As if remembering.

“I conjure a number I thought adequate with the training given.”

He continues, not faltering under his aunt’s intense gaze_. Is there a hint of worry in it? How unbecoming such is coming from her..._“Then I free myself. A Lannister always pays his debts.”

Closer he comes, his gaze turns soft at the sight of her mother’s face.

“May I?” his hands wide, hoping for an embrace despite knowing it will never be the same he has longed for.

_It will do. _

Arya hugs him, holds him in her arms, _such a tall boy! Even for Sansa_. She understands what it is like to miss a mother. She could offer him this much.

He squeezes harder, just for a second, before he frees her. “This is profound I supposed. I conclude my…. service. I return home, her truest home and I see her.”

“I don’t understand your desire to go in the first place.” She chastises him. too late, but she does still.

“I read and I listen. I gather that power _is_ power. As long as it remains faceless.”

Arya remembers too much vengeance pushing her down such direction. A lonely path, a dark one she hopes not for him. 

“You are going to do good with it won’t you?”

He chuckles. His fist pressed gently against his lips to stop it. “The very definition of good is malleable. I will do what right for the realms.”

An owl hoots from the distance and they both throw their gaze towards its source.

“Is this how she used to dress?” He marvels at her mother’s stitching and embroideries, seeing them on someone else’s body aches him. Soft materials yet structured in a way that mimics armour. A fighter, fighting with needles and thread.

“Such a dark shade for her.” A final comment from him.

“She used to love colors down South. She stops wearing them after everything, but I supposed she worn them again? When she had you?” Arya isn’t too sure. She has spent quite some time, protecting her sister but during that period, she was still draping herself in colors from the North.

A pensive smile, gaze thrown to heaven. “She did. Bright, cheerful colors. I still remember.”

\----------

Alder has been gone for almost three years with no news. More than once he has death creeping up in his minds; his son, his firstborn dead and left by the road somewhere. His son asks for permission to go to what’s left on the Wall. He reluctantly agrees, not wanting to stunt his potential by being too protective but when he receives news that he never made it to the Wall, his heart stops.

He has not the option to abandon everything, his daughters. He has sent men to search yet no one comes with news that could have eased him.

Imagine his shock when he arrives in Winterfell, to be greeted by the sight of his son, standing in line with the remaining Starks.

Relieved is too cheap a word to describe his state. Lilith and Edith almost jump out from the moving carriage, leaping into Alder’s arms and he holds them both tight into an unbreakable unit of three.

Their gazes met, and Tyrion recognizes the cold in his heart reflected in his son’s eyes. Hollow and all-knowing.

It is too similar to the one Arya carries.

\----------

“Alder, do you know? Come summer Edith will be away – the King has lifted the ban of girls and women from entering Citadel!” Alder looks at his sister in awe, causing her to blush with redness that is too similar to their mother’s hair.

“Father is not too pleased when he learns of Edith’s aspiration.” Lilith continues, only stopping to chew her food properly and swallow it. “She went behind his back, sending letters, thousands of them to Uncle Jon.” She lowers down her voice, yet not enough to be discreet from the rest of the table.

Robb Torrhen nudges Edith’s elbow vying for her attention. But she only allows a shy smile, uncomfortable she is being drawn to the center of attention.

Tyrion soaks in the warmth exuding from the long table. Family. _His._ He would have love to know more about Alder’s journey, but he settles with the banters between the siblings, between cousins and who would have thought Arya Stark has it in her to nag relentlessly?

Yet every now and then he tries to catch Alder’s attention, knowing too well that he could feel the sharp gazes sent to his direction but simply, he silences it with a nod, and by then warmth has returned in his eyes and Tyrion breathes in his relief.

He will pursue more on it.

Later.

\----------

Tyrion is searching for his son – his chamber empty when he comes for a chat, forcing him to wander in the castle, late at night, looking for him. He is grateful that the moon is bright, lighting the castle just enough to erase the needs for artificial rays.

He sees his wife everywhere. And with it, the cold in his heart turns warm. He catches sight of her, lost behind a sharp bend of a corridor and he follows.

A beautiful apparition it is.

Until he sees his son approaching.

He almost calls out to him, but his voice cuts him, as he speaks to the ghost of his wife.

The wall hides him well, and so he listens. Biting his tongue when the ghost is too generous with her words.

\------------

He has once dared to dream, that death will come knocking only when he is a hundred years old man. Twenty years shy from a hundred and he could already feel its grip over his brittle bones.

They are back in Winterfell; it is his final request.

His children in their chambers, he could hear the wailing of babes and toddlers, fighting for their parents’ attention. A smile cracks his lips, as he requests for Arya’s presence.

She comes, older than her mother. Not much of a lady but a true warden she is. Bold, carrying with her this force that bends flamboyant lords with just a stare.

He is proud of her, the same way_ she_ would have been.

She sits next to him, knowing too well what is coming for him.

“You call for me?”

“Yes.” Labored breath, followed by rough coughs. Arya pours him a drink. He refuses it - there is a much more important thing he needs to address.

“I have my suspicions, but I have kept it to myself all these years.” His fingers dig a hole into his palm as he rearranges words to make the request.

Arya waits patiently. Anticipating what comes next.

“Could I see her?” his voice timid, unsure.

“Of course.”

She has foreseen this, two or three times she has almost made the decision to give it back to him. But Sansa yearns for her home, and she could not allow the last piece of her taken South yet again. She produces a flat, plain box, placing it on her laps. Tyrion lights up, and for a second he looks fine, blood rushes back, coloring his face and his eagerness lends him strengths he has lost.

The box exchanges hands. But the tremors in his fingers stop him from pulling the clasp free. His face falls but Arya is quick to unclasp it, revealing the face he has gone without for years.

Instead of a gasp, he breathes in the sight.

_My wife…. My beautiful, beautiful wife. _

He picks it up, slowly as if he could hurt someone that has been dead for quite some time. He places his lips on her forehead, touching her eyebrows as one would to drive the non-existant creases away.

“You could have asked for it sooner,” Arya speaks softly, breaking the reunion of two lovers. 

“I couldn’t. I would have lost myself in grief. What would happen to my children then?”

His gaze never leaving her face.

\-------------

Once, he has said it out loud, he would want to die in his own bed, belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around his cock, at the age of eighty.

He dies, not in his bed, but in her home. Heart full of love, his wife in his arms.

\----------

“He would want this. Father and Mother, they do this for protection. And we will honour it.”

Alder has had the final say in dictating the best way to honour their father’s passing. It is unconventional, but he, Lilith and Edith have asked for Arya’s permission to dig a simple grave for their Father and Mother in Winterfell’s gods wood, right underneath the weir wood tree.

Arya lets them proceed.

Sansa would have wanted it too.

He looks so peaceful, their mother’s face he carries in his death. They each kiss both of them goodbye.

"She is waiting for you."

"I love to be loved the same way Mother is loved by you."

"Goodbye, Father. I hope it is true, that there is something waiting for us beyond this realm." 

_\------------_

Tyrion opens his eyes slowly; the darkness seems stubborn enough, clinging hard to his sight. Suddenly, light erupts, blinding him, forcing him to close his eyes yet again. He could feel a tug on the very thing he is holding on and amidst the confusion, he lets go.

“I am glad it takes you years to come back for me.”

_Sansa!_

One hand extends and he grabs it eagerly. She helps him gain his footing and finally, finally when his eyes manage to adjust to the light, he sees her. In that same red dress he has always been fond of.

His heart beats once again, and he sweeps her off the ground, stealing a kiss on her lips and her laughter, oh gods, her laughter nourishes his soul and he drinks it in.

All of it.

When he places her back onto the ground, he presses his palms against her cheeks, disbelief at what he is offered but he would take it without questions.

“Do you know where you are?” She whispers to him. 

“Where?”

She presses her thumb against his chin, her forefinger crawls and touches his nose, move again and touches his forehead, all while beaming at him.

“A world…where…you are one handspan taller than me..”

He doesn’t understand, cares very little of it.

All that he knows is his wife is here, with him.

\----------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I try a bittersweet ending. Fairytale of the sort. I kill her because I want her home. And she couldn't do that. Not when she is living, not when Daenerys is still alive. I want to thank you, all of my dearest readers that have given this fic a chance. It is wonderful to have you with me and wow, to think that people actually read what I write is something I find quite hard to grasp at times. 
> 
> I hope this is enough to make this fic memorable. 
> 
> You might forget it in the future, but I am sure won't forget the support you have offered me. 
> 
> Thank you, my dearest readers. Please, do leave comments and hope you enjoy this final update.

**Author's Note:**

> Before Jonsa, based on that small scene in the crypt I always thought they could have been a good couple. Tyrion really cares for her, respects her since the beginning. I like that, so I proceed.


End file.
